May I ask about your Jason Todd idea? <3
Hm, okay so. How to lay this out sensitively since I know it might be a tad controversial...
Prefacing by saying I'm not an expert on the minutias of Jason characterization. I like him when he appears, I think the battle for the cowl/Morrison era and some parts of modern era for him are Weird and Bad, but I'm not Jason scholar (for that I'd say maybe check out @/tumblingxelian and their great video essays), I'm just trying to think of what might be an interesting step forward for him.
First, the canon facts
Jason got lobotomized and has panic disorder on steroids. By the end of Gotham War (specifically when Jason was. Flying the batplane into the asteroid. God I can't believe that's the plot) he was finding it in himself to power through said panics
In Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #12, the joker gives Jason a "low dose" of joker venom, which has an ambiguous effect on Jason, allowing him to power through the fear (which joker explicitly states is still very much present, just not physically debilitating, like when Jason couldn't run over in either Catwoman #57 or #58, the one with the kid in the building) even though he'd been able to do that sans venom over in Gotham War, like I previously stated.
The effect of said joker venom seems to be lingering for now, minus the creepy grin side effect it gave Jason over in that man who stopped laughing issue, as seen in the latest batman issue (number is escaping me rn, #147??). He still has the stutter which is a shorthand for fear, he's drawn with fearful expressions by Jorge Jimenez, but he says that he's "working through it" thanks to the chemicals
This is both super interesting and kind of maddening as it doesn't completely remove the consequences of what happened in Gotham War, but is trying to sweep them under the rug and get back to business as usual. I, however, propose making said consequences front and center like a fashionable urn on a mantle piece:
Since it's never stated how exactly the joker venom works, and I think the current answer is "it works how the story needs it to" I've decided that because it's a low dose, it eventually wears off. And when it wears off, Jason's back to square one in terms of mental state. Ergo, if Jason doesn't want to live the rest of his life as quaking shivering husk of his former self...he's going to need more.
(read more for the meat of things)
So, Jason self medicates for a condition given to him by the father he has endlessly complicated feelings towards with a cure invented by a man who represents everything he hates in the world who once tried to take everything from him.
Which, insert poetic cinema gif here, I'm quite proud of myself for that one.
Anyway, there's a lot of directions you could take this. Personally I think it'd be interesting to explore Jason trying to get back into the drug trade like he did in UTRH (FULL TRANSPARENCY I HAVEN'T READ THE FULL COMIC, I KNOW BROADSTROKES BUT IM NOT GONNA TRY AND MAKE PARALLELS) as he tries to use the resources (production plants and other drug runners who can hook him up with samples of joker toxin/similar stuff you can probably find around Gotham) to manufacture his own cure that means never having to go back to the joker again. Maybe he ambushes a joker toxin chemical production plant to get his own supply, and then Jason uses this as his foothold back into that world.
This isn't necessarily me saying we should regress Jason alll the way back to UTRH, that was before his anti-hero era and I'm not willing to fully shoot him back into the past. I just think that's not how you tell good stories in a medium like comics. But it'd inherently be a little different just bc he's doing it for different, slightly more self motivated (depending on your take on villain Jason) reasons and the people around him would have a different reaction to it.
Anyway, all sorts of problems can arise! Depending on how you wanna characterize Jason (wayward son who longs to be back in the fold or black sheep who doesn't play by daddy's rules, etc) he can either a) try and hide this criminal enterprise from his giant family full of nosy detectives (good idea there jay) OR do it out in the open, trying to justify himself but still putting himself on the opposite side of the family again (not the law bc that boy hasn't been on the 'right' side of it since he died)
There's also the fact that Jason now needs to take something 24/7 in order to live his life. He essentially can't be without it, he's dependent on it, in fact he'd get sick without it despite any adverse effects it may have on him (which are guaranteed, I mean. No clinical trials)
I imagine it'd be easy to become addicted to it in some way.
And uh. This is the part where it works slightly better as a fanfic pitch than an actual comic pitch. Because as much as I think it'd be such an interesting beat for Jason's character considering his fraught history with addiction and drugs (looks away from that one urban legends story where he suggests terrorising addicts to get to the suppliers and bruce lectures him. The easiest way to make Mr "we don't sell drugs to children" sympathetic and you beefed it)
I also fully recognise that this is a sensitive topic that DC doesn't have the best track record with (although addicts aren't a monolith and feel a number of ways about addictions portrayals in comics) and that there's probably some pitfalls inherent in the premise, namely bc of Jason's background as an impoverished kid and his grey morality, and how those play into stereotypes of addicts. Addiction is already such a misunderstood and stigmatized condition that I imagine playing with it with an antihero might be enough to turn some people off. Addiction is not a moral failing and I'd hate to write it as a moral failing of Jason akin to his willingness to kill, etc.
But with all that said, I think that stereotypes are primarily harmful because of their shallowness. They inhibit understanding of groups labeled "other" by presenting them in simplistic ways that don't portray richness or complexity. And I think a truly good red hood comic could give both sympathy and complexity to Jason, even as an addict. If anything, Jason is a popular character (mostly) and there could be something nice about seeing a main character go through what you're going through, gritty details and all. YMMV (can we bring that back btw?) and it depends on execution. There's a lot of ways it could go wrong, but seeing as it just lives as a hypothetical rn, I think there's also a lot of ways it could go. I mean, not right, it's a downer story beat for Jason but it's mostly meant to be interesting and a vehicle for more stories as Jason navigates it, ya know?
Anyway, I have a lot of spiels littered in my notes app and discord DMs that elaborate on all this (how this could work as act 1 in a broader Jason story where his little operation goes to shit and he has to hit the road (jack) and maybe do some character development for better or worse. I'm a sucker and wanna say better- not squeaky clean better but. Yknow, finding himself to an extent. I recognise I'm a sap and a fool tho. Or how a new outlaws team could factor into either of those eras (since I do like Jason with an outlaws team. It gives him an excuse to exercise his compelling relationships and dynamics with other characters without having to constantly tip-toe around the elephant in the room whenever he's with the batfamily all the time. He just needs a good lineup) but that's all for another time
... though without elaborating on the vision in my head it kind of just sounds like my pitch is "Jason gets addicted to his hyper-anxiety medication" BUT I SWEAR ITS MORE THAN THAT.
It's like. If Jason has struggled as a character (and this is very subjective on my part so feel free to disagree) because he has compelling relationships with all of the batfamily, but also has compelling grey morality that makes it hard to capitalize on those relationships, without the conflict always coming to "Jason stop killing!" "Nuh uh!" OR just being ignored, and the main way writers have addressed this is via reboots instead of arcs...
Then giving Jason and the bats:
real, legitimate and fresh reason for jay to be mad at Bruce (taking their relationship of love with very little understanding to it's most dramatic conclusion)
give the family a real reason to want to bring him back into the fold (feel bad about the lobotomy and it would be pretty immoral to let Jason waste away slowly and painfully because of something Bruce did)
capitalize on all the ways Jason is sympathetic (bc the addiction is a natural lead into his backstory, which is one of his most sympathetic elements)
And the ways in which he's very out of step with the bats post-resurrection (I'd be mad asf too if i came back to life just for my dad to a) not avenge me and b) LOBOTOMIZE ME meanwhile the cunt ass clown giving me my meds is just lurking out there).
Idk it's not a sophisticated pitch as of this moment but I think a real chef (writer) could cook something w/ this
9 notes
·
View notes
Henrow blorbo
first off, ohmyfuckinggodyouaresocoolllllllllllllllll
secondly, what ya workin' on currently? <- is deathly interested, yes please please please info dump if you have the spoons
- Ryan
Bonjour my furry friend. At the moment i'm mostly working on getting a job so that i can afford rent, but when i'm not doing that, i'm working on designing some new N-substituted 5MeO-tryptamines (in order to avoid being banned for breaking tumblr TOS, i can't say exactly what for, but if you look up 5MeO-tryptamines, you should see). So far i've only managed to make things that make me super sleepy (and maybe a tiny bit inebriated), so presumably my body is mainly metabolizing them into melatonin. I also have been working on working through the details of making a rocket engine which relies on both muon catalyzed fusion and z-pinch fusion (mostly because even though i know it's way above what i'm probably capable of, i just love space so much i desperately need to see it for myself and i figure that since rockets are so absurdly expensive, the only way i'll end up in space is if we can get a whole new generation of ultra-efficient rockets (for example, given p-N14 fusion, if we manage to get 1% or more (i don't really expect more than 0.1% max, but still) of the hydrogen fusing with nitrogen, we'd be able to put 150 tons on the moon from earth with only using about enough fuel to fill a small car (instead of needing a skyscraper sized rocket to send maybe 30 tons)). Now, if it were as easy as my calculations show it to be, i can't imagine how there are any rockets flown that aren't fusion, but seeing as i haven't even made a working proof of concept yet, i'm not in a position to criticize the thousands of aerospace engineers who are working on conventional chemical rockets. I love fusion because it's simultaneously so easy (i live pretty close to an old uranium mine where i can actually pan some uranium out of the creek near me, then use that uranium to make a neutron source (B10(α,n)) which is really just fusion between helium and boron, happening at room temperature because of how high energy the α particles released by uranium are) and so absurdly difficult (without catalysts like muons, it requires absurdly high temperatures and pressures that almost always take more energy put in than they can give out). Anyway, i've also been sorta working on studying a material that a while back i got way too excited over and may have called a room temperature superconductor (almost certainly not the case), but in an attempt to make it more pure and study it for real i've been trying to work on the exact calculations of its composition and finding a better way to heat it up to high temperatures (i might just but it in a flat-bottomed flask, especially since it finally warmed up enough for me to go back outside where the fumes released by its production won't make folks mad).
And then there's the biological experiments, currently with electroceutical tissue modifications since most of the other projects i have planned require me to have a gene printer capable of reliably printing genes thousands of base pairs long and i'm not sure when i'll be able to build that. The most recent thing i've been working on is really exciting because if it works it means that i've successfully done something that has never been done before to a human body (and given the long lasting pain in that part of my thigh, it seems very possible it is working), but i'm hesitant about sharing what the project is because i don't really want folks putting gap junction blockers, calcium channel blockers, and sodium channel blockers into open wounds without knowing how to do it safely and correctly to get the desired results and not just a really messed up wound. If/when this experiment turns out well, i might give directions in private, but i'm still somewhat hesitant due to the risks inherent in this (the biggest and most likely is literally giving yourself a form of cancer, something i'm not eager for others to risk). Soon i might try chemical dedifferentiation of skin cells (thinking on my back or upper arms) followed by some mildly dangerous experiments to test how reliably i can make it turn into other cell types. And while i haven't made good work on it in a while, i've also been trying to make something similar to shimmer from arcane (ideally not addictive or harmful to the user, but most importantly the quick energy burst, decreased pain, and increased regenerative abilities (obviously it won't be anywhere near as dramatic as in the show, so calling it shimmer may not really make sense, but it is where i got the inspiration)).
Then i suppose there's the battery project i was talking about in my last post, and i'm also trying to learn how to make alcohol under my desk (i mean, it's super easy, it just doesn't taste great). There might be a few more things i'm working on but rn i'm super eepy and have talked about a lot already. If this seems like i'm doing a lot or impressive, also note that i'm actively failing out of college (for my own pride: the material is super easy and mostly i already know it, i just can't stand wasting so much of my time doing homework that doesn't help anyone or anything) and not yet working a job, so i have a lot of time and so much free brainspace to think about and do all this. I also work very slowly on each thing because i keep bouncing back and forth between all of them and almost always end up adding new projects before i've finished the old ones and so i almost never see a project all the way through to completion (at least some of the bio projects are just sitting in my body and i am just waiting to see how they turn out in the next 2-3 months, so those necessarily will see completion, even if it's failure). I really hope i see the fusion rocket to completion because if i don't think i'll ever be able to see the earth from afar or the moon from up close.
3 notes
·
View notes