Post-crisis Jason Loves Creating Situations That Mirror His Life And Death. In Under The Hood And Brothers

under the hood is not a conflict formed out of violent miscommunication; it’s a tragedy born out of irreconcilable differences between father and son, catalysed by the most traumatic event conceivable.

whilst, yes, batman initially believes jason was fighting him because he failed to save him then later on believes that jason is asking him to kill joker in that moment instead of making him watch the joker to be killed, the resolved miscommunication fixes nothing. you can even say it gets worse because now it’s not something that can be understood as an unavoidable hurt of the past or an easier justification of his moral line, it’s the one thing that is somewhat reasonable to ask but that batman is unable to provide- killing the joker himself or allowing jason to take the joker’s life without trying to prevent it.

jason knowing that batman attempted to kill the joker in his grief or that nightwing did succeed temporarily changes nothing because nothing changed. the joker is not dead and the fact remains that if batman and nightwing wanted him truly dead, he would be and the deaths of so many would have been prevented.

jason knows he was loved, in fact he actively mocks it because that love was not enough to save him or avenge him like he points out the same for nightwing when bludhaven explodes. but he doesn’t need just love, he needs to be prioritised by his father and batman can never let go of his morals to do so. in batman #425, batman implies that the death of so many as a result of garzonas’ fathers vengeance is jason’s fault, showing that it’s only a natural consequence for a father to avenge his son, with the only one at fault for the blood feud being the son’s murderer. jason has every right to have expected batman to kill based off this and batman just can’t do it. therefore batman hides behind his mission to rationalise his guilt to his son, causing jason to replicate his language of vigilantism and costumed conflict, using his own goal to appeal to him.

both jason and bruce are simultaneously correct on their moral stances on murder (not taking into consideration the extremes and perhaps diversion from the core of their moral philosophies), it’s been a subject debated and questioned for an inconceivably long period of human history and will continue to be done be done because there is no definitive ‘right’ in ethics. they’re both highly intelligent, motivated, and thoughtful characters who definitely considered all possibilities and landed on their moral code.

moreover, even if one of them was more ‘correct’ than the other and should move towards the other moral view, they can’t; both have made their stances on the issue as a foundational to their lives. batman can’t let go of his belief in hope and the sanctity of human life and jason can’t let go of needing vengeance to be able to continue on in his second chance at life and the question of how many more lives is he willing to risk for sustaining an individuals right to life.

also, on a meta level, their conflict is that of conventions of the superhero genre combatting criticism of it. batman does as any hero is expected to and treats jason as the antagonist he is with his murder spree whilst also responding to the final trolley dilemma by trying to find a ‘third option’ of keeping both jason and the joker alive. but jason mocks and criticises batman’s approach to vigilantism and the given tropes he embodies and we are somewhat encouraged to root for him in part of his calling out of batman’s extremes such as when he cries out for the death of captain nazi. jason pushes batman into a moral corner and he is killed by him because of it, shutting down jason’s genre awareness and serving as a final, damning critique of batman. both batman and jason todd’s defiance can not co exist because to do so would erase the valid criticism jason makes without meriting it or would cause batman to betray his own respectable mythos.

it’s a tragedy of father and son torn apart by their conflicting and extreme opposing moral principles that cannot be altered without work being put in that dc is unwilling to do. they both need to fight because they love each other and feel the need to bring the other to their side, but in their futile efforts “everybody still loses.”

iliad characters as florida man headlines bc me and the diomedestruthers were chatting about it;

odysseus:

achilles:

hector:

the ajaxes:

paris:

nestor:

menelaus:

calchas:

agamemnon:

diomedes:

neoptolemus:

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.

Hal and Ollie being queercoded as fuck but the Tumblr/tiktok/ao3 gays not giving a shit about either of them is the funniest thing ever to me.

Like it is played into so much more than most actually popular DC slash ships, but I borderline hesitate it to call it queerbaiting because they're so unsuccessful at actually baiting shippers. I swear they get more attention when they just have batman and superman stand in the same room.

jason todd would love lady macbeth

THE HENCHMINIONS AND RECENTLY RESURRECTED KING YAOI WOULD LIKE TO CONGRATULATE CONNORKYLE FOR SOMEHOW BEATING THE ROUND ONE POLL FODDER ALLEGATIONS.

this initially might seem weird if you haven’t read the play but the magnus archives is very comparable to sophocles’ oedipus the king.

jon is obviously oedipus, the detective of the horrific happenings and unaware he is the true victim and cause of suffering. both become cruel and even tyrannical in their paranoia that they’re being plotted against but the audience mostly feels pity. they both find out that they’re being controlled by higher powers and fates, manipulating them all along for their own purpose, which they might have escaped once but played into due to their ignorance. the major themes in common can be seen as sight/knowledge, especially obvious as they learn about themselves and are heavily associated with eyes. the theban plague is the apocalypse and both can be reversed with the downfall of the protagonist.

HUGE shoutout to the WORLDS most DOOMED mentor mentee duo ever to live. Just two extremely emotional, lonely, jealous, closed-off, insanely determined vigilantes against the world and also against each other routinely.

Imagine you are Batman, and you are immensely similar to this teen girl, and because it increases the emotional vulnerability that you can be comfortable with when she doesn’t know anything about you, or because it’s convenient to have a team member who is isolated and can be easily fired and completely cut out when she gets too close or hurts you or when you don’t need her anymore, or maybe just because you’re lonely and you just got hurt emotionally by the people who know you the best and you like the idea of getting the benefits of company without that vulnerability again, you don’t tell her your name and you don’t let her see your face.

Imagine your primary team is finally back, imagine Alfred has come home, imagine you aren’t alone anymore, so you ghost her Completley, cut her off until she tracks you down to demand an explanation, where you then fire her with the excuse of her ‘lacking the skills and talent’, and are fine to leave it at that forever. Imagine you think about it some more and it’s the anniversary of your son’s death and you feel comfortable enough admitting aloud that that must’ve been part of why you fired her. She was reckless and wanted to prove herself too much, and all that other stuff that got your son killed as Robin. Steph is just too like him, too wrong and too much to be a vigilante.

But then Robin has to quit, and he’s leaving you behind and he’s going to go away, so you, maybe half consciously come up with a plan, and when Stephanie Brown turns up in your Batcave with a homemade costume and a frenzied look in her eyes you solidify that plan, maybe still unconsciously. Imagine using the same excuse, the same exact phrasing, of Steph’s apparent lack of ‘skills and talent’ that you used to fire her, in order to justify hiring her as Robin.

Imagine pushing away that graveyard conversation, imagine ignoring the very same comparison that you drew. Imagine, for the very first time, having to keep the cowl on when it’s just you and Robin in the Batcave. Imagine the gnawing sense of wrongness. Imagine keeping it on anyway. Because if you took it off, she would have something. Because if you took it off, it would count. Because if you took it off, you’d have to look her in the eyes, and she could look into yours, and you don’t know if you could do that and also convince yourself what you’re doing to her is okay. If it’s just Batman, it’s fine. It’s manageable. It’s business.

You get that cozy, comfortable distance once again. You get to pretend you didn’t stand at your sons grave and told someone you didn’t want Steph to die like he did, and then turned around and gave her the same costume he died in the second it was more useful to you. And that unease grows and grows and grows. And that yawning uncomfortableness expands and expands. And eventually you can’t ignore how wrong it all is, how gross this all is, so you start looking, and you start hoping, and sure enough, she makes a mistake. And you immediately feel this Huge sense of relief. Thank god.

And you fire her and it feels legitimate enough and you get to walk away, justified and rational and reasonable and fair. You get to do it again, you get to wash your hands clean of it all, and you know then, it was the right choice to keep the mask on, because now you can change the lock to the side entrance you showed her and now you can tell the computer to stop accepting the password you gave her and now she is gone. Just out of your sight. Just gone.

I have used dog metaphors to describe Jason in his relationships with others on multiple occasions but Alfred straight up telling Bruce that maybe he needs to take his new puppy back to the shelter is not something even I could’ve come up with