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boyfridged · 1 year

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You may have already mentioned this in some of your other metas, and I just missed it, so please ignore this if it's redundant.

Do you think Bruce is projecting onto Jason by pushing him as a Robin? Obviously, Jason wanted to be Robin and was excited about it, and Bruce let Jason do other things, but (if I'm not mistaken) before Tim came into play, solidifying the whole Batman needs a Robin/support to keep him upright, Bruce and Dick becoming Batman and Robin, in the beginning, was also sort of a coping mechanism.

I think there are a few examples of Bruce enabling this kind of mindset. Like in Gotham Knights #43–44 (sorry), every time Barbara brings up Jason's inner turmoil, Bruce refocuses on his ability as a Robin; similarly, when Jason finds out about Two-Face and his dad, he is hurt, and Bruce acknowledges that but then does the same thing, zeroing in on reassuring Jason that he made a mistake but is still a good Robin.

Like, Jason got it from Bruce, but he unintentionally encouraged that kind of thinking.

oh, i definitely think that bruce is projecting on jason and that it profoundly affected jay. and, while every single one of your observations is apt, i would add that what truly made it so tragic is that he projected his own worst traits on jason while being blind to the fact that jay already shared his best qualities.

tldr: bruce projects himself on jason in terms of grief (saying that jason needs vigilantism to work his grief through) and sees his own worst traits in jason (anger) but doesn't see his own best traits in jay (compassion, love, and sensitivity). ironically, jason does end up developing all of the (projected) worst characteristics of bruce (obsessiveness, and relentlessness in pursuit of the respective perceived idea of justice). this happens even though they were barely present in his early storylines, and only ever manifested when jason was scared or lost. later, they truly came to be because of his trauma relating to vigilantism.

and the long, long version, coming with panels and quotes: under the cut.

first i want to say that the following analysis focuses very specifically on bruce's mistakes, but i don't view the overall of jay's upbringing by bruce solely in these terms. from text it is also clear that bruce deeply loves and cares about jay, and that jay enjoys being robin. now that this is clear, let's get to particularities, and start with jay's origin story.

i truly never stop thinking about the significance of bruce meeting jay in the crime alley, the place of his parents' death. there's a lot to be said about it, but here the focus is, of course, on the fact that he sees a little boy, very much similar to himself, angry and hurt, in the same scenery that brought him so much grief. and jay in some ways does appear to be a mirror of bruce's own agonies, as well as a mirror of his own inclination for seeking justice; and somehow, bruce fixates on the first one, while almost completely dismissing the latter.

bruce looks at him and assumes that the remedy to jason's pain and anger is being robin; and he doesn't stop to think about it. (it has to be noted that there's also classism at play, classism that is mostly a result of writers' own beliefs – collins did state in a couple of interviews that that the motivation behind jason's background was to make his introduction into vigilantism seem less offensive, as jason has already been exposed to crime...)

i think, in this context, it's interesting to look at the two-face storyline even closer, and from the start too. in the beginning, bruce talks of jason's 'street' roots and assumes jay would go "down the same criminal road that took his father [willis] to an early death." he also talks of jason making a lot of progress. later, in batman #411, after jason learns that willis has been killed by two-face, bruce comments that jay "has never been like this...listless...almost pouting--"

this all, along with jay's cheerful and diligent behaviour from the previous issue builds an interesting picture for us: because we essentially learn that jay has been overall an unproblematic child. bruce, of course, attributes this "progress" to the training. however, for anyone else, the logical conclusion would be that jay's quick adjustment was simply a matter of finding himself in a safe and stable environment and receiving continuous support and attention from a parental figure. i find it rather questionable that jason's personality softened down because he had something to punch in the cave–– the more intuitive explanation is of course that he was angry and quick to fight when they first met because he couldn't afford anything else and because he was scared. but months later, in a loving home, he can allow himself to drop his guard; and his cocky attitude disappears until much later.

so the rather unsettling picture that we derive is that bruce is training jay to become a vigilante in order to "channel" his (nonvisible at this point) anger into something useful and just. and he clearly links this to his own trauma in batman #416 (that’s already starlin btw), in his conversation with dick, explaining why he took jay in: “he’s so full of anger and frustration… he reminds me of myself, just after my parents were killed.” bruce also mentions that soon after their first meeting, jason helped him and "handled himself well" in the fight, but he doesn't mention that jay has ran away from a crime "school" and intended to stop injustice on his own only because he was ignored.

the theme of bruce comparing jay to himself appears again in detective comics #574 (barr), where it is approached with a much more... critical look, thanks to leslie's presence and her skepticism of bruce's actions. after jason has suffered nearly fatal injuries at the hand of the mad hatter, bruce reminisces on his own trauma and motives. he tells leslie: "i didn't choose jason for my work. he was chosen by it...as i was chosen." leslie replies: "stop that! (...) you do this for yourself... you're still that little boy (...)" then, the conversation steers to the familiar ground and the topic of anger. in bruce's words, again: “i wanted to give jason an outlet for his rage…wanted him to expunge his anger and get on with his life…” and finishes "and instead, i may have killed him."

the recognition that bruce's projection on jason and involving him with his work might have fatal consequences is, as always, fast forgotten once jay wakes up and proclaims that he wants to continue his work as robin.

but to circle back, i think there's something else worth our attention, something deeply ironic, that is showcased in that issue: that bruce has no evidence for jay's "rage." when leslie talks of bruce's past, she recalls his tendencies to get into brutal fights at perceived injustice as early as in school; when bruce talks of jason, two pictures that are juxtaposed, are that of jason fighting as robin and jason... smiling, playing baseball.

so, in the early days of jason's training and work in the field, we see bruce talking of jason's anger a lot; but we barely see it.

that being said, jay is angry sometimes– and i think your observation about how bruce deals with it is incredibly interesting and accurate.

we first see jay truly and devastatingly angry in the two-face storyline. bruce focuses on jay's reaction as robin, which is, in fact, aggressive. but something that he barely addresses is that jason's first reaction is sleeping all day, and not beating anyone to a pulp; in fact, this vengeful instinct seems to arise only when he is put right in front of two-face. and his third instinct, once the rage (very quickly) dies down after the altercation with two-face, is crying, because bruce hid the truth about willis' death from him. jay, while crying, asks bruce: "you have taken me out into combat-- but you spare me this?" in response, bruce lectures jason about how grief inspires revenge, which is, again, deeply ironic, given that jay seeking out revenge seemed to be prompted and enabled solely by the role of robin. moreover, his question suggests that at this point he saw grief ("you spare me this") and fighting as two different things.

the final is, as you said, bruce focusing on making it into a lesson on vigilantism, or, in his own words, "tempering revenge into justice." personally, i think in this way bruce directs jason to bring his grief into the field as a powering force, something that he didn't necessarily have an own incentive to do. the flash of compartmentalisation between his ordinary life and being a sidekick that jay has shown by questioning bruce's decision is lost. emotions are now a robin thing, and they have an (informal) protocol, a moral code. and when jay is confronted with an emotionally exhausting case next – the garzonas case, i believe that the focus on "tempering revenge into justice" is exactly the problem– we don't see jay crying, we see him frantic about finding the solution. this, right there, is bruce's obsessiveness, that in my opinion, was developed in jay specifically as a result of how his engagement with vigilantism combines with his deep sensitivity.

and, needless to say, his sensitivity is all the same as that of bruce – they both can't stand looking at other people hurting, they both wear their hearts on their sleeve, caring way too much – the thing is, bruce never quite acknowledges how they are similar in this matter. instead, he focuses on his sparse bursts of anger, wanting to bring jason closure in his grief the only way he knows it – in a fight for a better world. so, as you said, he focuses on jason's ability as robin.

which just doesn't work for jason. at all. we know it from how his robin run comes to an end: in the first issue of a death in the family (batman #426) alfred informs: “i’ve come upon him, several times, looking at that battered old photograph of his mother and father, crying.” to that, bruce contends: “in other words, i may have started jason as robin before he had a chance to come to grips with his parents deaths.” he also tells jay that the field is not a place for someone who is hurting; a message that is the opposite of what he's been saying for years now, and something that i imagine was difficult for bruce to conceptualise, because then he would have to question his own unhealthy tendencies. it's a bit late to come to this realisation; bruce's self-projection that caused him to worry so much about jay's anger has already turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy that will fully manifest itself in utrh, when jason does the only thing he was taught to do with grief: try to channel it into justice.

#AHHH this took me so long for no reason at all. so sorry anon <3 #anyway. i'm obsessed with your observation regarding bruce's focus on robin in the two-face storyline #i've already briefly considered it but you made me go back and reread it #and i just stared at these panels of jason in bed all day for like good 5 minutes thinking. jesus christ. jesus christ #“you spare me *this*?” <- this line is making me feel SICK TO MY STOMACH.#so maybe bruce is right when he says that he made jason like this in tfz.#and jay is of course even more right when he says that he didn't make him. he raised him #also don't apologise for bringing in gotham knights #i actually talked about it some before because it is a very good illustration of bruce projecting on jay #<- i didn't include it here bc my post was getting insanely long.#anyway back on the topic. i think it's so deeply sad that jay genuinely has no idea #that this is what bruce thinks #i think he would be DEVASTATED if he knew the way bruce fixated on the idea of his anger #hm. normal now.#thank you so much for this ask. you can tell i was delighted to answer it <3 #i actually already had a draft about it when you sent it... but i'm sooo slow with editing my word vomit #outbox #jay.zip #jay.txt #dc #jason todd #core texts

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amrv-5 · 9 months

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5, 6, 29!

HELLO PRAX AND GOOD AFTERNOON!!!! Thank you for contributing to my Procrastination Effort o7

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

Generally I never say never. However when I was initially fucking around with the idea of Somewhere to Get To, I had considered it starting in the far future. Like, 2010s, and it would have started with a little vignette about one (or several) of Hawkeye's patients just living life (was trying to play abstractly with the question that comes up over and over again in S2G2 of, like, was it worth it for Hawkeye to have been there? What did the world gain from it? Etc.) Reveal that Hawkeye in fact is recently dead, and then a slow fall back into the primary plot with our young(er) Hawkeye. But this 1. felt weird 2. didn't work and 3. made me sad, so I chopped it. It's still around in one of my docs I think but it sucked.

6. Are there any fics from others you reread all the time?

Fff. ouughhh. Okay this is gonna be LONG and cover many fandoms sorry. Okay. So:

In general,

Designations Congruent with Things by CWR is something I reread every few years in order to have my brain exploded about how I'm never going to write something that good and also to catch feelings about wanting to be known and loved even when you don't like yourself, and to cry a little about humanity's drive for knowledge, etc.

Also Pacific Rim, irisbleufic's "Anthology" series. Haven't reread it in a while because it makes me like believe in love and the good of humanity and stuff. 'S brilliant. The end scene with Newt and Boston and the sky....... sticks with me still 5 yrs later. Awesome.

Also Welcome, Wanderer from singlecrow (TNG) which makes me crazy and is a great great great playful interesting multi-textual piece, dense and fun and fascinating and fae and good. It rules.

And the entire Controlled Burn series by jimmymcgools in Better Call Saul, of all places (some of the most gorgeous lyrical prose I've ever seen frfr).

[voice of a guy digging through his bookmarks and downloads] I can't believe I forgot "There Are No Gays in Football" by Malu_3, Merlin fandom. Changed me. The wrangling of fame and identity...

Speaking of Merlin, Pianos are made for Falling by fishwrites. Nodame Cantabile AU, kind of. Blew my mind as a teenager and I still love it. Makes me cry.

ANYWAY in MASH, Maple Syrup by Granspn when I can emotionally handle little Hawk, and "these are the days of miracle and wonder" also by singlecrow (Radar in the field, plus also Hawkeye's century of the atom speech are 2 indelible MASH ficdom images to me). Homecoming by yaroantheo also murks me every time.... the wedding scene....... I'm sure there's others but these are the ones coming immediately to mind.

29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic.

Fuck. I forgot I was working on a modern AU Beejhawk just to prove to myself that I thought it was possible to do while maintaining the spirit of the show. I don't think I'll ever finish it. A chunk of that here:

Hawkeye woke him by pelting him with a ballpoint pen.

“Hnf,” BJ said, opening his eyes, disoriented: he saw only a span of featureless beige tile. His proprioception lagged, struggling to inform him where and how he was positioned in space. He felt briefly as though he was floating, released from the perpetual falling of earthly gravity, and then groaned as direction reasserted itself. He was face-down on a floor somewhere for some reason.

Another pen contacted his face and he flinched. “Stop.”

“You’re an hour-fifteen late,” Hawkeye informed him from somewhere far above.

BJ’s body jolted into action without consulting his brain. He slammed his head against the underside of a table. Memory was coming back to him in pieces—a late case, scrubbing out, vision greying and fuzzing at the edges, sitting down in the mess, deciding to have a cup of coffee with Hawkeye who was only halfway through his own shift. He’d fallen asleep, evidently, or lost consciousness and then fallen asleep, but how had he ended up underneath the table?

“Which case?” BJ asked, nauseated with exhaustion, uncertain what day of the week it was, only tentatively sure of the month. Fabric shifted over his torso as he hauled himself out from under the table. Somebody had draped a lab coat over him as he slept.

“Hunnicutt v. Hunnicutt,” Hawkeye said, voice calm and unemotive, which was a kindness.

“Oh, fuck,” BJ said, closing his eyes, dread walloping him. He debated the merits of lying back down and sleeping until his next shift began or he died of a widowmaker—not that he’d be leaving anybody widowed once Peg’s lawyer was through with him.

“Hand me those pens, will you?” Hawkeye asked, like he hadn’t just used them as artillery.

#my fic #sort of?#anyway THANKS FOR THE ASK!!!!!!#ask game

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earl-april · 2 years

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Going to answer these two together since they're both CP related; this is going to be a long one. Thank you to both of the anons, who wrote these, they both made me smile! :)

I've been avoiding these questions until now as I didn't have a response I could give to all the people on here and in the comments on AO3, Wattpad and Quotev. I briefly touched on my plans for CP on my Discord ages ago, but I didn't explain it on here.

So far, I haven't got any plans to continue CP. I haven't decided to discontinue it yet, but I haven't had the motivation to continue it for the 2 years I've been away or even now. There are 2 main reasons for that.

I started writing CP all the way back when I was 15 and still in school. The fanfic has been going on since then and still isn't anywhere near finished. I'm 20 now, and my writing style has changed a lot since then, particularly in these last 2 years. I'm still in the GF fandom, it has always been and will always be my favourite show, and Bill Cipher will always be one of my all-time favourite characters. So I want to emphasise that my lack of motivation isn't due to a lost interest in GF or Bill. Rather, these days, I have a hard time not seeing the flaws in CP and getting annoyed at the choices I made back when and the direction I started taking the plot. This isn't to imply that I didn't know where the plot was going since I mapped out an ending and a process of events to lead up to it. However, that amount of events got too convoluted, some of the plot points and characters (OCs) were underdeveloped, and I realise now that I can barely keep up with my own damn plan. I guess I didn't realise how much of a big project CP was becoming until it was too late. I flew too close to the sun, and here we are now.

I feel the story needs a lot of editing. Some chapters need to be entirely rewritten, but I don't have the time or energy to do it. These types of edits are big, and it all comes back to the various scenes, the direction of the plot, underdeveloped characters, etc. These big edits seemed so daunting, and as time went on and I reread some of the chapters I wrote, I couldn't help but see the flaws in my writing. I suppose I lost a bit of love for CP as time went on. I realise the story isn't finished yet, and not beyond hope, but the earlier scenes play a part in foreshadowing, therefore setting up what's to come later. The only way around it is to go with my original plan or tweak it a bit. There are certain aspects I like about it, such as the ending, but there are others which I don't like. This is why I haven't chosen to discontinue it entirely, since I think there is still hope for it, but there is just a lot of work. We're not even halfway through the story yet. Really, it mostly comes down to time as I have other writing projects taking up part of my time that didn't back when I was still in high school writing fanfiction as a hobby.

Perhaps I'm holding CP to too higher a standard, considering it's only fanfiction. But it's just not in my nature to write something and not give it my full 110% effort. Unless I find some spare time and regain the motivation to write it, I won't be continuing it, nor will I have any idea of where I want the story to go.

I've decided to approach CP the same way I have with all my other fanfics. I'm going to write a chapter at a time if I can. So I may publish the next chapter as I already have the plan for it, but I can't promise anything. Though if it doesn't, it won't be a guarantee that the fanfic will be finished. Very slow updates from here on out. I understand if some people don't want to hold on waiting to see if it will be updated. I'd be annoyed at me too. Though I don't want to lie and say I'm discontinuing it and then post the next chapter x months later. I'm only going to do that if I'm 100% sure that it's the end for CP.

I'm sorry to everyone enjoying it and for this announcement seeming a bit wishy-washy. If I could give you a truthful yes-or-no answer, I would. If I decide to officially discontinue the story, I will stand by what I said in my Discord and post my notes and my original plan. That way, you all can at least have some closure and see what was going to happen and how the fanfic ends.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for supporting CP! :)

- EA

#CP #cipher psychosis #x reader #fanfics #fanfiction #ask box #anon

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