* A pointless rambling of the relationship and parallels between Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd.
Picture this opening scene: There are two boys in a dark alley.
One is dressed in an expensive suit with a tie his dead father helped him with only earlier that evening. His hands are stained red with the same blood now puddled on the grimy cement. His face is in shock.
The second boy is dressed in tattered jeans and hoodie. His hands are stained with tires grease and are clutching a tire iron. His face is in shock.
Decades later, there are two more scenes to consider.
A seriously injured man sits slumped over in his father’s study. Without warning, a bat crashes through the window, and everything falls into place. He now knows what he needs to do.
Elsewhere, an emotionally distraught teenager is curled up into a fetal position on a hotel room floor. Heart wrenching cries can be heard from him. But it is only momentary. He now knows what he needs to do.
These two individuals are Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd. While they are both broken and determined men, Batman is a hero. The Red Hood is not. He is the anti-Batman and this is why.
Two Boys in an Alleyway
Despite similarities in their stories’ early themes and elements, Bruce and Jason came to walk down very different paths. One of justice, and the other vengeance. Batman is determined to protect the innocent and Jason more so on punishing the guilty. Both their ideologies have intrinsic flaws, of course, and will naturally clash often. But this wasn’t always the case.
Before they became a father and son perpetually in mourning for who they once were and what could have been, Bruce and Jason were remarkably similar. The two are cut from the same cloth and Bruce knows this better than anyone else.
In the Dumpster Slasher three-part story line, (Batman #414, #421, #422) Bruce becomes emotional. Violent. He sits in the batcave alone that night and contemplates his emotions.
“Nearly blew it. I let it get too personal. Lost my detachment…nearly lost control. Almost beat Cutter to death. Wouldn’t have been any big loss.”
Only one issue later, at the end of this story arc, Robin is out on the streets and becomes angry when he happens upon a pimp is threatening a prostitute with a knife. Now, I want you to compare his line here to Bruce’s and note what Jim Gordon said to him as well.
Batman: “I think he’s had enough, Robin. What were you trying to do, kill him?” Robin (Jason): “Would it’ve been that big of a loss if I had?”
It is important to note here that Batman is not worried or upset just because Jason roughs up a pimp. That would be hypocritical considering his own earlier actions. If anything, it’s because one of the main reasons Batman even takes in these kids, these ‘robins,’ is because he doesn’t want them to be like him.
And Jason was acting just like him.
Jason can and has screwed up and failed due to his own actions, but it was never the reason Batman became upset with him. His reactions in the comics when Jason does things like running ahead and ‘jumping the gun,’ are more like this:
He either makes a teaching moment out of it or is attempts to understand Jason’s reasons in doing any such thing. When Bruce does become harsh in his discipline, it’s either when he feels as though Jason has endangered his own life or as I said, he acts too much like him.
While there are quite a few more similarities between Bruce and Jason that makes them alike, such as both being introverted and interested in obtaining all sorts of knowledge that they might not even feel is relevant, they are both, at the core of their characters, deeply caring and compassionate people.
The differences only start to show with how they acton it.
The Not-So Dynamic Duo?
“What happened to you as a child, the terror, the pain, the horrors (…) you were broken, and I thought I could put the pieces back together. I thought I could do for you what could never be done for me. Make you whole.”
Hot take. Jason Todd is a villain and is best written as a villain.
Not in that campy way like he’s written during Dick and Damian’s Batman and Robin run while wearing that stupid pill-headed hood, (although, I grant he has a few lines that are enjoyable to read) but in all his serious, vengeful and downright brutal motives.
The Red Hood is the perfect Batman villain because he’s so different from what the widely perceived perfect foil to the controlled and disciplined Bat is…the Joker.
The Red Hood was vengeance at its purest. It is justice without being tempered by mercy. It is the rage of victims who were forgotten to become statistics. While other vigilantes wait for a cure, hope for rehabilitation, and pretend their system works, the Red Hood is a man of no such faith.
And this makes him a villain. And a damn good one.
During the Red Hood’s time as a crime lord in Gotham, he goes around blowing up buildings. He throws grenades into trucks. He mows down his competition with gunfire. Batman comes upon the bloodied hanged corpse of a man he was finished interrogating.
But what is so compelling about this all is that before all the murder, all the guns and explosions, Jason Todd was a very different little boy. And all the great and memorable villains start that way.
The Joker is not someone you’re meant to sympathize with or even understand. In fact, I find him more terrifying because he’s unknown. He has no backstory (unless you want to believe the one he gave in Killing Joke, but the clown has a new story for every face he meets) and seemingly does what he does for a laugh of all things.
Jason Todd is in pain. He’s traumatized. Betrayed. Buried. Replaced. He is no one’s son because his father abandoned him.
Once upon a time, Jason Todd was a boy who saved himself. One of the biggest lies that Batman himself perpetuates is that hesaved Jason from a life of crime. He tells Alfred that Jason was always dangerous. Bruce simply took him off the streets before he could be any worse.
But I don’t believe that’s true.
Jason grew up surrounded by crime, poverty, substance abuse and yet this amazing kid saved himself everyday by making a conscious choice to be kind and care about school, care about keeping his mother alive for over a year when he was just a child himself. That amazing kid was magic.
Jason Todd as Robin was magic.
“Jason smiles. A bright smile. The kind Robin, the Boy Wonder should have.”
A good portion of his character’s assassination was in order to push the Tim is the perfect Robin idea. It was editorial decisions. The same ‘suits’ who insisted that Tim Drake be the Robin in the New Adventures cartoon despite having Jason’s backstory and personality. But I digress on that.
Jason Todd was an introverted, studious, and emphatic person. He wanted to make friends with other kids his age even though he was a loner at heart. He joined the school baseball team and was a class officer, even if his training kept him from most social interactions.
He was also very much in tune with non-verbal cues and small changes in the environment around him. He was a thoughtful person who could be found admiring the stars or passing by scenery. When he teams up with the New Teen Titans, we get to see these aspects of his personality:
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful before. We’re actually riding above the clouds.”
“Every so often, I notice you become awfully agitated…like something was going on you didn’t want to be part of. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
It didn’t take Bruce long to fall in love with this boy and ask to legally adopt him. He found him to be smart, thoughtful, quick at learning and funny as hell. Their first meeting opens with Batman laughing in the very same alley his heart was ripped out decades earlier.
Even in the Rebirth canon, (RHATO #48) we see that Bruce is already set on taking in Jason while he’s still with Ma Gunn’s school. He likes this kid. A lot.
“Butler, actually. You’ll meet him someday, I’m sure.”
Jason Todd was happy. Mostof the time. Unfortunately, he still wrestled with depression and would sleep all day on occasion and could be found crying hidden away on his own, withdrawn from the concerned Bruce and Alfred.
In A Death in the Family, Alfred and Bruce sit down and discuss Jason’s worsening mental health, particularly after the Diplomat’s Son where Jason becomes witness to sexual assault, suicide and the failings of both Batman and the GCPD to protect innocent people. Barbara, his tutor, someone he cared about and got along with, is also shot a few months earlier.
Bruce thinks Jason has become suicidal. Alfred does not disagree with this theory and supplements it with things he’s observed himself about the ‘lad.’
“I’ve come upon him, several times, looking at that battered old photograph of his mother and father, crying. When he’s seen me, he’s hidden the picture and left the room, refusing to talk.”
It is then that Jason discovers the truth about his mother at the worst possible time, when he’s not even thinking straight, and thus leads way to the tragedy that will be his murder at the hand’s of the Joker.
The Curse of Jason Todd
“Do you have any idea what you have done?! Do you? You have no inkling of what you’ve created – what you have unleashed! You have set free a curse upon this world!”
Red Hood: Lost Days, which depicts Jason’s dark post-resurrection origin, opens with Ra’s al Ghul bellowing this line, the steam from the Lazarus Pit still rising off of him.
I’m not going to analyze this line, I’m just using it to supplement a point of mine I hope I’m getting through well enough. The Red Hood is a compelling, tragic villain. He is similar to Batman in ways that Bruce always knew and may have even feared because of how intimately he knows his own deepest, darkest thoughts. Jason is the perfect foil as an antagonist for him because of what he represents to Bruce.
And it’s not his anger, or his rage, or even his brutality.
It’s his compassion. His caring. His emotions. And how they can open up the worst parts of themselves.
Both are motivated by preventing whatever trauma happened to them from ever happening to anyone else. They both trained for years with this motivation. And they’ve both acted out on the very person who inflicted their trauma onto them.
Here’s where their paths start to differ, however, and what separates them with a line of morality.
They both get angry. They both care so damn much. About Gotham, about innocents, about each other. They both get too emotionally invested and deal with consequences related to that. To manage with that, Bruce shuts down. He creates all these choices, rules and symbols. He uses every ounce of his self control to keep them.
Bruce Wayne is not a good person. He forces himself to be with discipline and will. He chooses to be a good man and constantly pushes himself to live up to that. Because it’d be too damn easyto be just like the Red Hood.
Jason doesn’t understand that. Because no matter what Bruce had done or will do, he doesn’t hate him. He can’t. Despite his denial of the fact to different people, he still thinks of Bruce as his father. This great figure that so many others revere and are even intimidated by.
He’s not the only bat-kid to think of Bruce in this light despite the fact that the man is not. It took Dick years to overcome that perception. Tim only just started to begin understanding this true nature after his own father was murdered.
But even if he did understand his (once)father, he still became the complete opposite of him despite so many early parallels. He doesn’t hold back his words and emotions, he doesn’t go into a state of controlled dissociation or emotional disengagement.
Jason Todd—the Red Hood—is Batman without all his rules and control. In a way, he’s what the darkest part of Batman himself wants to be. Jason does what Batman can’t do when it’s needed.
Because in Batman’s book, life beats out justice. Even if he could take down abusers and murderers, he won’t. He will choose saving and protecting lives over the apprehension of killers…he always does.
Batman is justice. Red Hood is vengeance.
Jason is a victim’s fantasy. He punishes and kills the guilty. Something Batman won’t do.
sunshiney characters who adore the mean grumpy character, platonically or romantically, but not DESPITE them being mean as if that isn’t who the other “really” is deep down. they love it. they think the other is the funniest cleverest most delightful person alive
if the sunshiney character doesn’t have to cover their mouth up trying not to laugh at every sharp comment, completely altering how everyone else thinks abt the sunshiney character, then what’s the point
Want to enter? Read below! Entering means you agree to work with me as a fandom friend and be respectful of my time.
Custom Witcher Fic giveaway! I’ll work with you, incorporating your ideas into 3-5k word fic. You’ll be marked as a collaborator on Ao3 and gifted the fic there. The fic will also be posted on Tumblr.
Will write: Smut, pining, drama, violence, fluff, modern AU (crack fic can be discussed)
Will write: most major pairings, rare-pairs can be discussed (see my Ao3 for pairs I typically write)
WillNOTwrite: dead dove, major character death, dub/non-con
If you win: working via Discord is easiest for me, so we can chat freely. I will also reserve the right to mold your ideas as befitting my time and writing style, and to chose another winner if you cannot work within the giveaway rules.
To enter: reblog this original post! Get an additional entry if you reply with your favorite fic trope. Winner chosen November 19th! Fic to be written December - January.
YO on top of my postcard, here’s a preview of the piece I worked on for the @batgirlzine with the fabulous @thychesters !! This project has been so much fun so far, and pre-orders are still open over here! Make sure to check it out, and I cannot wait for y’all to see the full piece and read the fic Kate wrote; it got me good
The post office sits on a crossroads, directly in the middle, code untethered around it.
“I’m still getting the hang of things,” says the Postmaster. “It’s been a long time since I was last out here and…” He looks around. “It’s not in very good shape anymore. But I’ve managed to find two addresses.”
He drifts into the building, which is heavily worn down and in a state of disrepair. Lines of green code can be seen running through the walls where the wood has fallen away. A massive, dark winged bird-dragon is curled up in the far side of the room. It cracks open one golden eye at the Postmaster’s arrival, and then snorts and closes it again.
The Postmaster steps around the end of the counter, and to the wall of dented, caved in postal boxes behind it. There are only two useable boxes.
“It looks like I can send mail to Locke, in Fields of Fara, and Bolte, in Fara Falls,” says the Postmaster. “If you want to write for them, I’ll make sure that they respond. You just need to give the letter to me, alright? Make sure that you say who it’s going too. I can’t deliver things that aren’t signed.”
He runs his fingers over the rest of the postal boxes.
More softly, clearly directed at himself, “and maybe… Maybe I can fix the rest of these boxes, too. I think it would be nice, getting to deliver more letters. I’ve missed it.”
To celebrate my return to actively writing for Groundhog Day, @twinmother was lovely enough to come up with not only the idea for this blog, but the icon for it! If you’ve ever wanted to send a letter or a question to Locke or Bolte, now is your chance! Write them a letter and, through the magic of the Postmaster, they’ll be forced to respond!
