I Write Love Stories And Found Family Because I Desperately Crave Some Semblance Of The Affection I’ve

I love them so much

Robins: Being Robin

Issues #1-6

I’ve been getting more and more attached to Jason’s character so please indulge me. I will be having to section these off cause I’m gonna be talking about two pieces of media </3

Titans

I’m watching season three of Titans right now and, it’s a wonder. There’s a few aspects that bother me but overall I’m in love so far.

The season makes a bold choice by literally opening on Jason- a hero- doing drugs. Sure in season two it mentions Hank doing drugs because of Hawk and it does show him in the act of snorting a substance, but the difference is, he’s an adult. Hank is a thirty something year old man who has probably most likely killed people, Jason isn’t.

Yes, Jason is violent. Yes, he did assault police officers, but he never killed anyone. Jason may legally be an adult but he still acts like a teenager because he is one. He’s a traumatized teen having to deal with the fact that he’s repressing so much from everyone he loves. He never gets an outlet to discuss what’s happened to him with people he trusts.

A great example of this is when he’s about to jump off the the Titans tower in season two. He tries talking to Dick, he says how he feels and he try’s expressing himself, he tries so hard to get his brother figure to understand what he’s going through. What does Dick do? He flips it around and unintentionally makes it about himself.

The closest we get to him actually opening up is when he starts trusting Rose, telling her about his upbringing and starting to get comfortable with her, comfortable loving her. Then she reveals that she only met him because she was trying to manipulate him.

The impact of him turning to drugs hits so much harder. He’s just scared, he turns to anything he can to help. It’s so much deeper when it’s shown that the drug he takes isn’t heroine or coke or anything like that. It’s a drug that stops fear.

He literally felt so weak that he took drugs to repress his emotions to the point where he felt nothing, he felt nothing and thought he was better because of it. There’s no doubt that at this point in the story he’s addicted. Jason started using before he died and the madman who gave him the drugs started using them to manipulate him. I’m really interested in where the story is gonna go with it, I really hope it actually dives into withdrawal and how Jason would cope with everything going on around him without the help of drugs.

Comics/Animation

Overall with every piece of media I see regarding Jason and the batfam, it never really manages to depict Bruce and Jason’s relationship accurately, one of the good ones was that single episode of Titans. (in my opinion).

Me personally, I see Bruce and Jason’s relationship in a very complicated light.

When he first gets adopted, Jason views Bruce as a nurturing figure. He sees him like every child sees their parents, perfect. It’s like he can do no wrong. He’s Batman! And he made Jason Robin! It’s a perfect opportunity, he was being helped, he finally had a dad, one that loved him.

Before Jason died, he still very much idolized Bruce but not to the point of thinking he was perfect. He knew Bruce wasn’t perfect, he just couldn’t bring himself to actually say it. Jason couldn’t face the fact that Batman didn’t need a Robin, he didn’t accept that he could still be Bruce’s son without being Robin.

After he died and came back, there was resentment. He hated Bruce, despised him with every fiber of his being. Depending on what canon you’re watching/reading, there’s different reasons for why. Either Jason is mad that Bruce took Robin away from him before he died, effectively taking away his only coping mechanism, therefore resulting in his death. Or, he hates Bruce for not killing Joker. His father didn’t avenge him, he could care less about Batman having an obligation to avenge Robin as his sidekick—fuck Robin. He cares that Bruce, as a father, didn’t kill the Joker to avenge his son. He let his sons killer roam free, putting the psycho in Arkham won’t do anything. Or or, he holds resentment that Bruce couldn’t save him. He couldn’t save his sidekick, his son, his Robin. He failed.

No matter what happens between the duo, Jason always holds self loathing in his heart because of Bruce.

Across all forms of media, he always develops the thought that Bruce hates him. He always thinks that he’s the ‘least favorite/most hated child’ even though it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Bruce loves him, Jason is undoubtedly the favorite child.

(Sneaking a Titans reference in here—) The fact of Bruce caring for Jason more than his other children, (cough cough DICK) is solidified when he takes the Robin mantle away from Jason. He’s trying to protect his son in a way he thinks is best. He saw and heard what being Robin did to Dick, he doesn’t want to put Jason through that. Even the line where Bruce says “I don’t want to make the same mistakes.” Jason perceives it as Bruce calling him a mistake. He lashes out and gets angry because he thinks that he’s being called a mistake. It’s not true, the sentence itself with the context of the episode and the episode before show that it’s not true. Bruce is calling Dick his mistake, not Jason.

Throughout everything, Jason sees anything negative that Bruce says or does as a direct attack on him, when he’s the only one Bruce actually tried to parent. Dick was treated like a weapon. Jason, as a child.

I know i’m functionally a gay DARE officer at this point but I do in fact feel some sort of way about Cocaine being back in vogue. Surely I sound like a square + narc and I’ll concede ok do whatever you want, nobody can materially stop another person from using drugs if they really want to 🤷🏻 I don’t really care that it’s hip to do party drugs, moreso I want to articulate a general level of caution and concern that I never see a sidecar of harm reduction and safe using practices along with the commonplace clips of people straight up snorting coke I’ve seen for “brat summer!!!1!!”

You 🫵 are not immune to ingesting fentanyl or any number of other additives. Do you think drugs at the gay club are different than the drugs people are taking under bridges and in gutters? I promise they’re not! So if you want to use drugs and continue being alive, do your part to be safe. Protecting yourself protects others and your community.

Do not accept drugs from strangers. Test your drugs with fentanyl test strips. Carry narcan and know how to administer it. Never use alone. Have an exit strategy if you’re using drugs in a public space. Know the contact information for your local harm reduction groups, overdose emergency hotline, and if you need/want it, addiction treatment orgs. This is all the bare minimum for community care if you intend to be out in the world using drugs. Mainly I encourage you all to be buzzkills if it means you don’t have to die of an accidental overdose. Overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans under 40. I have a whole lot of social workers in my network and however bad you think the synthetic opioid crisis is, it’s worse. The war stories I’ve heard from my people on the ground are… The shit of nightmares. Don’t let it be you or anybody you love.

If you live in the state of Georgia, DM me for a longer list of resources.

Fentanyl information (harm reduction.org)

Get Narcan

How to use fentanyl test strips

Call 311 to find out where to get Narcan in your community at no cost to you

At the gate for my flight home from visiting friends and there's a woman here with a service Shiba Inu. No pics because he has a Do Not Disturb vest and taking pics of strangers is illegal but I need to stress how ON DUTY this animal is. Ears up. Eyes doing Lazer scans of everything. Examining everyone who passes within 10ft like a security guard. Ass planted on her feet. I have never seen a dog with such intense chivalric guardian energy before. He has tiny eyebrows and they are FURROWED with concentration.

after all is said and done—after the Batfamily finds out that Jason is alive, after he and Bruce finally start to adress the joker-shaped elephant in the room, after Tim stops flinching every time Jason enters the room—the thing that hits Jason right in the chest out of the blue is fucking school.

he kicked ass at Gotham Academy. most of his teachers loved him (and the ones that didn't knew better than to try anything with Bruce Wayne's son). he was on track to win a special award for being the top English student in his grade.

sure, some of the kids were snobby and privileged little brats that were all bark and no bite. and sure, the parents somehow managed to be even worse. but did he complain?

not once. he dealt with the external shit (the whispers behind cupped hands or the assholes who "tripped" into him and sent his shit scattering to the floor) the same way he dealt with the internal shit (the imposter syndrome or the fear that one day, Bruce would decide he wasn't good enough): he worked his ass off and proved them wrong.

sure he's deadly with a mask over his face and a weapon in his arms, but give him a pen, a prompt, and sixty minutes on the clock? and he becomes the angel of death himself.

or at least he used to.

he never got to graduate, he suddenly realises. he never got to walk across that stage and receive his diploma. he never got to go to prom or go on the senior trip. he never got to sit any of his english exams (and yeah, he took AP Lang and AP Lit the same year, what about it?).

as Red Hood, he's good at a lot of things (murder and destruction, mostly). but as Jason Todd, school was one of the few things he was actually fucking good at, damn it.

once again, fate's made him into her personal chew-toy. dangling everything he ever wanted right in front of his face, close enough to touch, just to snatch it away again.

rate your pain on a scale of one to ten

I still can’t get over how the author of that Game Informer article for Veilguard wrote in it that he has less than 50 hours in Inquisition and worded it like that was a large amount… baby girl I got 493 hours clocked in that bad boy

I need more of the batfam acting like normal siblings in fics. Like you know that thing kids do when they’re stuck in the car for too long??

(In the same pretense as “I’m not touching you”)

Tim: I’m not even in crime alley

Jason: (pointing a gun at him) your foot is over the line

Tim: but I’m not in it

Jason: why are you even here??

Tim: wouldn’t you like to know weather boy

riz gukgak is the character of all time. he's a goblin. he has a gun. he's in high school. he's saved the world multiple times. he's died before. he carries a briefcase with him everywhere. he threatened to eat a dragon. he refuses to stop investigating mysteries because otherwise he would have to deal with his grief over his dad's death. he did fantasy cocaine in a floating pirate city. he lied about having a romance partner and then got kidnapped by the manifestation of that lie. he tattooed clues all over his body in case his memory got wiped. he doesn't know how to connect with his friends outside of life-threatening situations. he has abandonment issues. his dead dad is a secret agent for heaven. he's canonically hot. he throws up when he's nervous. his nickname is the ball. he loves his mom. he hisses at things. he ran over a guy with his friend's van. he brought back an eldritch entity because he can't let a mystery go. he's even aroace.