Jason Todd Would Love Lady Macbeth

consistently characterised jason todd you will forever exist only in my heart

rewatching the under the red hood movie and i gotta say as much as i love jason’s speech to bruce about how mad he is that the joker’s still alive, i still maintain that a severely underrated speech in this movie is from ra’s when he’s talking to bruce and in essence says ‘yeah so i hired the joker to distract you which was my bad because he totally went overboard and killed your son :/ and i felt so guilty i decided not to try and fight you anymore and then i stole your son’s corpse and tried to revive him via lazarus pit so i could like. make amends. except that was also my bad because we fucked that one up real good and when he came back out BOY was he weird in the head. killed my guys and then fucking jumped out a window and we lost him. my bad. and i thought he’d died again but apparently he’s in gotham and is like. totally destroying your whole lives which again, my bad. shouldn’t have tried to help. sorry about that. i’ll just stay out of your business from now on.’ which is actually the funniest characterisation of ra’s i’ve ever seen

“He would not fucking say that” except its the badly written source material so he did, in fact, say that

(batman #422)

as much as this story is deeply flawed, this is an interesting take on batman’s no kill rule. batman is a figure practically leading a one man war against violent crime, and being someone who holds restraint with every fibre of his being he knows he needs a system to hold himself accountable if he loses himself along the way.

despite the system’s extreme flaws maybe, to bruce at least, there is no better way for batman to define his moral limits and judgements. he doesn’t hold good account with jim gordon because otherwise he would be arrested, he could easily evade arrest; but he does it to be under the spotlight of the best representation of a possible uncorrupt legal system. the justification that he is one kill away from being a serial killer shouldn’t be the truth necessarily but it’s the worst case senario that batman must account for- the potential flaws of letting himself define what he does meaning he becomes the extremes of violent crime he is fighting against.

it’s ultimately hypocritical because batman aligning himself with the law means he perpetuates a corrupt system that causes part of the violent crime he despises and when he goes above and beyond to solve a case such as his interrogations it imitates police brutality. however, in fiction, injuries and trauma caused by batman’s methods have less consequences than the inescapable reality of murder and the reliance on corruption lets infamous rogues out of prison yet again leads to more entertainment. this meaning batman’s hypocrisy is much more palatable and justifiable on paper.

there’s a certain number of “bad writers” after which you just have to accept that yeahh that character is just like that now, it doesn’t mean you can’t disregard recent works but it’s canon that sucks, not a certain work or two

just imagining telemachus growing up only remembering his father as an idea of a man who is fighting in a war to get back to him. until he’s around 11 and the war is over and his father isn’t back.

the idea of him and penelope slowly becoming resigned to grief but holding out hope because odysseus is the strongest man either of them can think of.

the idea of penelope seeing telemachus, looking so much like her lost husband, become more and more cruel to her out of his insecurity and resentment.

and her knowing that the more telemachus grows up the closer the day is where she promised to remarry. the day she will be forced to forget the memory of odysseus and leave their palace and their son, all to be a prize for a man not much older than telemachus.

the realisation once all is restored that penelope delaying her marriage may have delayed fate because it’s probable athena only made odysseus leave ogygia because penelope’s shroud trick was exposed and she would have had to remarry soon.

under the clarity of i have still not slept and it’s half past 4 in the morning, i can safely say that i was wrong:

jason would have a plan for being caught, in fact he would have a whole speech prepared complete with citations. this doesn’t mean that at this point he wouldn’t crumple like damp paper as soon as bruce tries to bring him home, either going with him or running away, but he’d give a valiant effort. (maybe, secretly, he was hoping or even relying on being caught here, making him all the more at a loss when faced with the detonator in the actual comic.)

lost days jason being picked up by the scruff of his neck after batman accidentally catches him planting the bomb on the batmobile. jason immediately goes to attack but because he’s not trained to kill as well as he is later on he’s disarmed quite easily. jason looking so young, not having killed anyone yet, and not being in control of the situation through careful planning meaning bruce is more likely to accept him but jason’s emotions are completely raw to where his actions are just fully calculated fury and hurt. also this is before wargames and stephanie’s death so that would make bruce have less emotionally vulnerable because his lack of fresh grief and guilt.

“Well I’ve walked on water, danced through fire

Can’t seem to take it anymore

It was me, more for me, waiting for me this time

Hoping for something more, hoping for something else

Hoping for something kind, hoping for something more

Waiting for me this time”

the fact that these were changed lyrics of new dawn fades in their last concert haunts me

so the diomedes server told me to post this... im not sorry

the minimal amount of context below the cut

courtesy of @ithacantrickster and @jewishdainix

oh and this is in context of Jorge mentioning Diomedes in his potential Trojan War musical themes