in a city of millions of people ONLY selina can care about the poor and east end/park row and ONLY helena can care about children and rape victims 😉😉 but we can steal jason's traits and give them to tim (btas lmao) or bruce (ul cheer) and then wholesale lie about jason's personality to make batman look good/victim blame him for his death 😉

Well, because I'm a contrarian at heart, now I will disagree with this a bit, even though I never shut up about the story-breaking double-standards imposed on Jason.

Just to touch on some stuff before I get to the "trait-stealing" discourse...

Almost all superheroes and even many villains-who-have-standards do care about children and rape victims. I can see how some fans would get upset at seeing the broad claim that certain characters really really care about victims, because it implies that most other characters don't care enough. So, yes, all heroes should and do care—although different fans might latch on to different characters that express care in ways they find personally satisfying.

I don't think too many people are arguing that BTAS "Timmy Todd" isn't an adaptation of Jason. Once people realize how much BTAS Tim was clearly inspired by Jason, then most people seem to agree that those are signature traits of Jason. There isn't much debate there, as far as I can tell.

Others have covered Cheer thing better than I could.

I would say, yeah factually, Jason hasn't been a community-based hero in canon, and that's something I find really compelling about him. Like several months back on Reddit (yeah yeah I know lol), I did bring up Selina in the Brubaker run as a contrast to Jason. Selina became a community-based hero in that era, and Jason was not.

I believe that Jason did not think of himself as someone who can make connections with others (at least before he was magicked back into the Batfamily by the Morrison run and the New 52). He couldn't be a community-based hero because he couldn't be part of a community. He wasn't building up a neighborhood, he wasn't a neighbor to anyone. He did help people—and then he'd leave them, just walk away without a personal connection. I can't quite articulate it, but there is a distinction between Selina's streak of running away from "being domesticated" for better or for worse, and something like Jason's belief that he is this thing that is incapable of connecting with people. (Jason's immature idea that it's not his role to heal people and be part of society is the very idea that Bruce keeps reverting to as a middle-aged ultra-rich man with several kids and a famously massive support system btw! Bruce is literally doing it again right now!)

Also Selina did do all sorts of selfish, hurtful things when she was Jason's age, and when she was older too. (And she was AMAZING at it! I'm not against her Robin Hood era, but I miss her self-indulgence and misadventures as a rogue.) Helena was going ham mowing down ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀssᴇs ᴏғ ʟᴏᴡ-ʟɪғᴇ sᴄᴜᴍ back when she was a bit older than Jason is now as a defanged ex-villain in current-day comics. (Hey, I'm not going to be some self-appointed cop holding her accountable for that. Sometimes fictional women set fictional men on fire to cope. 🤷‍♀️ Her outfit looked great while she was burning people alive in front of children. We Aquariuses are free spirits.)

I'd love for Jason to return to Crime Alley and set up there. He's this guy who kept having his connections cut over and over, then became this weird tumbleweed thing cut off from everything, and then he could regrow his roots where it all began. As you say, there are millions of people in Gotham to help (...or to haunt; lesser evil Jason could be my jam too). And that's exactly what fan fiction is supposed to be—fans' wish-fulfillment for the potential of stories and characters. Yes, there is fanon in the fan fiction. That's where the fanon belongs.

A lot of this "trait-stealing" discourse is not helpful, it's not kind. It's not interested in actually exploring the contrasts and parallels between these characters. It's actually stripping these women and girl characters of their traits and their journeys to label them "Female Jason". It's an echo chamber, maybe even a bit a snobfest.

Like I'm sorry. The stories of these women in their mid-20s and 30s who have lived in their own apartments, established their careers, formed adult relationships, come to understand their sexuality—they don't have the same journey as the societyless freak-of-nature zombie boy beefing with his own dad who is the local god-tyrant.

If I argued that Helena, JPV, Cass, and Damian all retread the same boring tortured killer cult-deprogramming redemption arc, then that'd be reductive and narrow-minded and frankly anti-storytelling of me.

Or if I just jumped to assume that fans who headcanon Bruce as Jewish are stealing his cousin Kate's canon Jewishness and refusing to engage with a canon Jewish lesbian character out of sheer bigotry, then that'd be skipping straight to the most negative possible assumptions that I could make about actual real-life people and their motives.

That's really the worst part of this. Reaching to assume the worst in real-life people. The moral posturing. This need to display superiority. Over—I can't emphasize this enough—the consumption of corporate American superhero comics.

not gonna elaborate it rn, but people diminishing Jason's experience with homelessness, malnourishment, childhood abuse and neglect, because he got adopted by a billionaire while also hcning Tim Drake to be abused and starved by his wealthy parents is rooted in racism and classism

Okay... I never called myself a Super Serious Batfamily fan. I read what I want and pick things I like from canon and fanon like strawberries. So maybe I just don't have enough information or dedication.

But.

I really, really don't understand why liking one character necessitates hating another? I'm primarily a Tim Drake stan, but Jason Todd is my babygirl too. Damian is a sweetheart and doesn't deserve a bunch of the crap the Tim Drake fandom gives him. Dick isn't perfect either. Tim has made many mistakes. Steph has. Bruce has. Almost everyone has (I feel like Cass and Alfred might be exempt but I don't know lol) and I really hate that there's this attitude of "Batfam member vs Batfam member".

Like, welcome to having siblings. My brother could absolutely say the meanest thing he's ever said to me, and I'll give him crap but I'll sit next to him at dinner.

I don't know, and I know there are such things as AUs where a sibling is more intense than other universes, and vice versa, and I fully utilize my ability to move on from a fic if I don't like it, but I just hate the character bashing that seems to take some parts of the fandom by storm.

It makes me sad, ok? 😭😂

"We need more character development in comics." Y'all can't even handle Tim not hating his brothers who are trying their best to be good.

Jason and Bruce's first encounter in Batman #408 is blatantly mischaracterized so often that I have to do a double take every time I see anyone talking about it. I would like to say before I get into this that there's nothing wrong with disregarding canon, but you gotta know what you're disregarding or you just completely ignore the important character dynamics that are set up.

First of all, Bruce didn't see Jason stealing his tires and say "oh yeah, I'm adopting this kid." Yes, he did think it was funny and end up getting invested in Jason's life, but he had no intention to adopt or even interact with Jason again. He sends Jason to Ma Gunn's school, hoping that Jason can get an actual education and have a successful life.

People like to claim that Bruce was just lonely after Dick left and so he replaced him with the first kid he saw, and if you assume that Bruce just grabbed Jason off the streets after their first meeting, that seems pretty damning. but he DIDNT. he didn't initially want to make Jason Robin, he just wanted Jason to have a good life and get out of Crime Alley. (don't get me wrong, I still think it's fucked up that he made Jason Robin and failed to communicate with him about what that really meant and made him feel like he had to live up to Dick perfectly, but if we're gonna critiquing Bruce, we're gonna do it accurately.) He didn't even plan on interacting with Jason again in any meaningful way until he finds out that Jason isn't going to Ma Gunn's, and Jason explains that it's not a real school.

And after that he STILL doesn't make any decisions. It's not until after Jason tries to stop the heist at the museum completely separately from Batman that Bruce even takes in Jason himself.

And yeah, I really don't like the way he did this, but the narrative that Bruce just scooped Jason up off the streets because he wanted a new Robin is just straight up inaccurate. Yeah, I can totally admit that he probably felt at least a little lonely with Dick's absence and that affected his decision, but I think more importantly he saw himself in Jason and made his decision based on that.

The same way he recognized Dick's trauma with witnessing his parents' deaths, he recognized Jason's here. Do I think letting these kids fight crime is the best way to handle this trauma? of course not! but as explained earlier, he didn't originally intend to make Jason robin. And even more than that, these are comics, they don't have to be good choices that would be okay in the real world!

Okay anyway I forgot what my other points were and I just spent an hour writing this out and finding the panels, so uh here. Sorry I went on a little bit of a rant here.

Fandom please...

If I'm being honest I really hate all those posts and discourse that go somewhere along the lines of "Bruce's favourite or whose the closest to Bruce ect ect"

Just any kind of ranking with the bat kids relationship with Bruce.

They're all very complex relationships and they all bring different things to the table they all understand Bruce in different ways. And Bruce loves them in his own way. They're his kids that's the end of it.

Jason’s final monologue in Under the Red Hood is so impactful and important because he’s being honest. His speech hinges on the fact that he’s being open and honest with his feelings on how the last few years affected him. I’ve seen many people argue that because Jason is an unreliable narrator at times, that means he is an unreliable narrator all the time, therefore nothing he says can be trusted. Unfortunately, this feeds into the “anything can be canon behavior for Jason because he’s written so inconsistent therefore I don’t care and besides fanon is better anyway so there” argument where actual consistent character traits often get ignored.  

While, yes, Jason can be an unreliable narrator, and while, yes, Jason is written incredibly inconsistently, this doesn’t mean there’s nothing consistent about him. I remember a couple of years back, some people were arguing how absurd it was for Jason’s opening line to be: “Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me” because it would be impossible for anyone, especially “someone like Jason” to not hold a grudge against a person for not making it in time. They couldn’t buy the fact that someone could concede like that. Of course, Jason is lying here, how could he not, in some part, blame Bruce? But this completely side-steps that Jason does that all the time, pre and post-death. Some of his last words were forgiving Shelia for murdering him and apologizing to Bruce for not being good enough. He doesn't blame Catherine for forcing him into the parental role for both him and her and Jason usually places Willis strictly in the “it’s complicated” box. He constantly takes the fall in his tumultuous relationship with Bruce like his apology letter to the man at the end of TFZ. It’s not out of character for Jason not to place the blame on Bruce, but rather forgive him and dictate his ire to where the real blame falls: the Joker. Again, he doesn’t even place the blame fully where it belongs because he doesn’t mention Shelia’s role. (yes, DC wants us to forget about her role in his murder. Especially in UtRH as can be seen in all the bad robin!Jason rhetoric, but that outer world meddling affects the inner story) 

It’s a cop-out to claim that because Jason is unreliable at times and inconsistent at others that means you can subscribe whatever meaning you want to his words and actions. He’s not his own character anymore, he’s an OC to fit you’re narrative which strips him of his story. By saying he’s actually lying(whether over if he forgives Bruce or so he can blame Bruce later on because “he needs something to be angry over”), it strips away the farther-son tragedy of this moment.

Jason is having a contained breakdown. He’s trying to keep it together, and that’s why when his voice breaks on “doing it because–because he took me away from you” and he starts crying, it’s impactful. He’s raw and alive and it’s still not enough to be seen. He has no point to soften the blow with “I forgive you.” He has no reason to lie about that when trying to get his father to see him. If it was just about the joker then Jason could’ve said “I blame you for not saving me and to redeem yourself, you have to kill the Joker.” But Jason Doesn’t ask him to kill the Joker but instead demands to know why he’s free without consequence, why he is still breathing.

If Jason wanted “to push his goalpost farther with Bruce,” he would prey on Bruce’s blaring guilt complex. It’s incredibly telling and significant of Jason's character that he doesn’t do that in this moment. Therefore, we can assume that if Jason had succeed in killing the joker, he still wouldn’t use that to guilt Bruce.

Jason instead talks about how much he loved Bruce–still loves Bruce–and how the man meant the world to him, and how he feels used because he thought he meant the same to Bruce. By saying he’s lying in this moment to trick and ruin Bruce, you are undercutting some of Jason’s most consistent behaviors: his desire to love and be loved, his desire to be a part of a family, his desire to be important to someone, and how he will put up with almost any and all maltreatment to get that connection.

Jason “pushing his goalpost” further highlights how many don’t understand his emotional distress tied to his murder and instead want to place him solely in the “completely delusion” category where his victimhood is undermined. It’s not about getting Bruce to kill, at the end of the day, the ultimatum was to kill Jason, not the Joker, it’s about wanting his father to understand what he needs to feel safe. That is Jason’s request. Not the clown. Him. He’d rather his father kill him with his own hand so he’s not forced to live on the same earth any longer with and share the same air as his murderer. What makes this as an ultimatum is that Jason fully believes that Bruce loves him too much, therefore, the man would never kill him allowing Jason to achieve his peace. Whether you agree with Jason’s methods or not is a different matter, but that is the tension in this contained scene.

Furthermore, a lot of meta lately says that if Bruce had let Jason kill the Joker then he would guilt Bruce by saying “why would you let me do that? You tainted my soul and hands!” which ignores: 

A. Jason’s actual legitimate reason for wanting the Joker dead. The former belief falls back on the “Jason is so delusion and dramatic!” trope, the “he’s not the right kind of victim” trope because he’s angry instead of submissive and “actually has no good reason to be angry, he’s just being difficult for the sake of.” It completely undercuts Jason’s actual trauma with getting no justice. Bruce preaches Judge and Jury, but Jason got neither. So many victims get neither, and Jason’s anger represents that. What gives Bruce the right to say Jason’s not allowed to play his own executioner in relation to his victimhood when he never got the morals and ideals that Bruce himself preaches so thoroughly? 

And B. more obviously, Jason killed in UtRH before their big confrontation? Famously, the duffle bag of right-hand mans’ heads. He killed in front of Bruce already as well? Captain Nazi? Like, also in lost days, which is a prequel to UtRH, he kills? What’s the actual argument here? Loosely, It reminds me how everyone wants to blame the entirety of Jason’s takeover on pit madness. This “you’ve tainted me” argument sounds as if Jason is not aware of his actions and traumas. Not to say he’s completely sane or not delusional at times throughout his publishing history, but to think Jason would be pissed at Bruce for letting him kill the Joker is to dismissively say “no, you don’t know what you need, but I do.” 

No, the Joker being dead won’t fix everything, but with the joker dead, it would literally be removing a real-life constant trigger of Jason’s. Yes, Jason is a synecdoche for victims, but he is also that himself: a single victim. Joker is a stand-in for everyone who’s ever gotten away with a vicious crime free of judicial step-in or failure, but he also is just that: Jason’s murderer. Yes, they both metaphorically represent something bigger in this scene, but on a fundamental level, the Joker is also just the person tormenting Jason and nothing more. By saying Jason doesn’t actually want what he wants stands in for saying victims are too wrapped up in their trauma to understand what’s causing it. It’s mitigating and demeaning how bad it actually was/is. Jason’s murder in comics still holds such power over the mythos today even though “everyone’s died. He’s not special” for a reason and it’s because his life is actively shown to be affected by it.

Jason has been shown to have PTSD-induced panic attacks around the joker (Lost Days), and about the joker (famously the rebirth issue where Jason hallucinates murder victim him), it’s not far off the say that whenever Joker commits a mass atrocity, that it affects Jason in some way. 

And we canonically know that it does! In Lost Days, Jason breaks down in tears in the streets over all the families that have been and will be destroyed by the Joker. So that Survivor's Guilt train of thought is canon for him: “those people are never coming back, I’m here and I’m not supposed to be, but they’ll never return”-esque

No, killing the Joker won’t fix all of Jason’s issues and trauma surrounding his murder, but that’s obvious. Yet, have you ever been in a bad relationship and part of the issue is literally just being around that person? The healing process starts when you step away. You can’t heal in the same environment that’s harming you. This goes hand in hand with how Jason will only begin to heal as a person when away from Bruce because he’s such a dominating, constant trigger in Jason’s life (again, proven in canon when Jason backs away from Gotham and the Bats). No, the joker being dead won’t fix everything, but it will allow the process to begin where Jason isn’t constantly rehashing his trauma every time the Joker escapes. Jason has tried to heal on his own except the clown keeps coming after him. Whether it’s him attempting to burn off his face or in his mind when Bruce physically drags his murder to the forefront of Jason’s thoughts shoving him into a breakdown over how he’s trying so hard to heal. Part of the reason it’s so hard for Jason to move on is because his trigger buttons are constantly being held down for extreme amounts of time. It’s not that he heard or saw something that brought him back to his murder, it’s that Jason is literally being held in a constant state of panic, grief, fear, and unsafety.

By saying Jason is looking for something to be angry over and he’d find that in Bruce if he let him kill the clown, it frames the moment as a winning vs losing moment that Jason will always lose no matter what. This is a faulty understanding of how healing works and is reminiscent of Three Jokers. You can’t win at healing like Geoff Johns tries to say Barabara did and Jason failed at. Healing is something you do with ups and downs. At the end of the day, it’s a son yelling at his father to help him. It’s not about winning or losing, joker tries to make it about that (“everyone still loses”), but that frames the interaction in a much pettier light. This strips the moment of both Jason and Bruce's raw, exposed wire in water, vulnerable emotions. This looking to be angry argument is also reminiscent of the fandom's love for pit madness which strips Jason of his righteousness. Jason has very understandable reasons to be angry. His life was stripped and stolen away from him. It’s like when people say Robin Jason had anger issues which completely ignores what he was angry over! He hated rapists and pedophiles and big, authoritative tough guys who beat on women! He wasn’t angry all the time over everything; he had very real, systematic issues that upset him in overwhelming ways. Boiling him down to “he needs to be angry” wipes Jason of his motivations.

Jason doesn’t plan for a future. Really, he never even thought Bruce would kill for him in the end. When he first came back, sure, he thought Bruce would kill the joker and make Jason “the last person he ever hurt”, but in their final confrontation, Jason just asks “why on God’s earth is he still alive?” and then “I’m going to blow his deranged brains out and if you don’t like that you’ll have to kill me. Shoot me right in the face”: his ultimatum. In the confrontation, Jason doesn’t even believe he has a full claim to be upset over the Joker for just himself. He talks about Barabra being hurt by the clown and is pretty rescind to his murder in the fact that he says he was one of so many corpses filling dozens of graveyards made specifically by the Joker. Again, “last person he’d ever hurt,” Jason is fairly fine with being dead and doesn’t even think he deserves to be back, but because he wasn’t the last person the clown hurt he pushed that as his climax for why he’s angry. 

Really a better commentary focuses around “well, what does Jason think is going to happen after?” because Jason clearly doesn’t want to be alive. He sets up like four ways of suicide in his final scene. One of my mutuals a while ago posted their thoughts on what they wanted the after to be. They said they wanted to see a story where Jason killed Joker in this showdown. They believed he would probably enter this dissociated shock over the joker’s dead body, over the fact that it was just that easy, that it’s over. But, this fact would lead Jason to the realization that he doesn’t need Bruce to “save” him (i.e. protect him/keep him safe). This has literally been rotting in my head for months, you have no idea. And I truly see this as the outcome of the showdown if it had gone that way. Sure, Bruce didn’t stop him, but he also didn’t stand up to protect Jason from his murderer. Jason, just like in every other aspect of his entire life, had to protect himself. Once again, he has performed his own emotional labor, and that would probably break him away from Bruce’s chains. He got what he wanted and he didn’t need anyone else to do it for him. This interaction further shattering the heroic image he upheld Bruce to. I think that’s a much more realistic outcome based in Jason’s characterization rather than him throwing a fit over the fact the Joker’s dead therefore he has nothing else to be angry over when Jason is shown to be angry over a lot of other things as well.

the way people care more about jason fighting tim than like any other rogue fighting tim during his robin run is...!

"they're brothers! jason is so horrible to attack his little brother."

aside from the obvious twinkification of tim, stop pushing the family narrative on two people who did not see each other as siblings at that moment.

Yknow, slicing someone’s neck with a batarang after they gave you a gun for a clean shot is pretty rude way to kill someone Bruce :/

So, i've been checking Jason Todd Tag and tbh i don't see where's the jason stan glorifying murder and stuff came from, maybe because i already blocked many jason haters? Idk

Yeah, ugh, every so often there is a discourse outbreak, like clockwork, like a seasonal flu. And the last thing I'd wanna do is add fuel to the fire and make any slapfight bigger and last longer.

There are some Jason stans who argue Jason has justifiable reasons behind his murdering, in the context of this fictional world of supervillains and city-destroying schemes. I think they have some points—though I usually see that moral debate as pointless. The moral debate is mostly irrelevant to the story. The important part is what and how and why the characters do stuff. I don't believe Jason has done what he's done out of solid moral reasoning.

But still I'm really not fond of that pearl-clutching "GASP!!! Killing is wrong! The Criminal Terrorist stans are missing My Selective Interpretation of the narrative, and they're the ones justifying the real-life war on crime!!"

Man, just wait until they learn that all violence is bad, actually. Leslie Thompkins is sincerely the only correct fictional character. Everyone else is literally wrong. It's really that basic.

I'm a Jason Todd drug denier, if you write him doing drugs we're actually enemies. /lh

If you write kid him smoking cigarettes, that's okay because it's canon and nicotine is appetite suppressing, you can use it to make a good fic of him dealing with starvation and homelessness. However, the moment you make him (adult or kid) smoke weed, just know I'll be outside your door and you'll start coughing blood in three days

Aren't Roy and Dick the same age? Wouldn't that make shipping Jason and Roy weird?

not me getting this after wading through spider-verse discourse

The common consensus is that Jason and Roy ~4-year gap. It's a little weird if Jason is Robin, but most people who ship them picture them as adults.

To elaborate, I don't have an issue with people having different takes on the character. Give me two Jason stans and you will get three versions of Jason. It's inevitable with how different his comics are thematically and in how they depict Jason. Jason in the 00s was a villain and a foil, Jason in 10s was a major character in his own right. Jason now is mowed down by Zdarsky and told interesting stories with by Rosenberg. Jason is back to grassroots type vigilante he never really was in Martinborough's work. Jason was a sweet child pre-Crisis and was intentionally moved toward a tragedy in Starlin's run. Jason was an afterthought, a cautionary tale, a ghost of subconsciousness, a fridged woman, a foil, again - or first, in the 90s and early 00s. Titans Jason - the only live action depiction of Jason - was a case of missed potential; great drama material, but with speed-run of the UtRH storyline with unnecessary changes made him inconsistent.

If you consider him a psycho, okay, it's there in Morrison's work. If you want to say he's morally inconsistent, you can point out how he went from Bruce's foil to Dick's to Tim's, even Mia Dresden's. Which, it all required tweaking, because these four are not the same, so their foil couldn't be either.

But isn't it the case with all the characters? "Catwoman cares about Bowery" the only thing she cares for the last ten years with any consistency is her boyfriend. That's not who she is anymore. Why would you insist someone to pick your version of Catwoman but you refuse to acknowledge that other fans can do the same with their favorite character?

And you, Jason fans, who are always self-disparaging, who always feel the need to get other characters' fans approval, the need for disclaimer: Jason Todd is a Terrible Person, I'm Not Like Other Jason Fans Who Deny That - can you stop? Like what even makes you like him as a character and not a function, if you think he's so terrible, so hypocritical, so this and so that, without any reason or explanation? No, I am serious: what is it that makes him so compelling for you? If he's irredeemable, if he's a loser, if he's all second-hand fanons, if he's a lesser Helena Bertinelli or Selina Kyle or anyone else?

the only “modernized” take of the joker i’ll accept in the battinson movies is if joker does a twitter poll for whether or not to kill robin

This is in defense of Jason's "hand me down" friends.

I've seen some folks upset that Jason "doesn't have friends of his own" or "gets Dick's hand me down friends" and like. No need to shout you don't have similar aged siblings, my man (kidding, kidding). More seriously: hand me down friends are a thing for some sibling sets.

I adopted the friends that belonged to my older sibling as my older sibling drifted from them. I also watched one of my younger siblings drift from their bestie and that bestie end up another younger sibling's best friend. It just be like that sometimes. That doesn't make a friendship any less important or authentic.

Those younger siblings? Sibling A doesn't actually talk to that once-bestie anymore, besides casually, whole Sibling B talks to them all the time. That's a bit of an extreme (though still a very amicable drifting-away for Sib A and Ex-Bestie), but like. Jason and Roy? They make complete sense to me, both as a Sib that adopted another Sib's old friend and as a Sib that watched other sibs trade friends.

Anyway. Sometimes a sibling drifts away from a friend while another sibling drifts toward them. It happens. Sometimes it's only a bit of drift, sometimes it's a shared custody situation (one of my Sibs and I shared one friend, as a bestie for each of us, for years). Is what it is. But what it isn't is unrealistic or whatever. It also isn't unrealistic for Jason to lose touch with old friends and make new ones, even if those new ones are hand me downs.

That's all, thanks for reading.