If You're Looking For Stories About Adults Acting Responsibly And With Measured Calm To World-ending

Fucking LOVING this energy, yes, thank you, this is a great take on a classic trope!

Jason would be so frustrated. He's kept his secret identity, but at what cost? I can only imagine the ribbing he'd get from his team once they find out, let alone the other Bats.

Now I'm thinking of the next inevitable invasion where all hands are on deck and half the League is wondering why Jason is still dressed as the Red Hood and the other half is wondering if the Bats don't know that that's Jason.

My favorite fic trope is the "JLA meets the batfam because they arrested Jason as he was undercover and now the family is coming to pick him up" one, but imagine. Jason gets arrested by the JLA while undercover, and is brought in for questioning, but before any of the batfam members even notice that he is gone, Green Arrow walks into the interrogation room.

"It's okay, Superman, you can let him go."

"Green Arrow, Red Hood is a wanted criminal on the JLA:s most wanted list-"

"What? No, no he isn't, that's just Jason."

Superman stares. Jason stares too.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me, that's just Jason, my son-in-law. You can let him go."

"...your son-in-law is the Red Hood?"

"No? Jason's not the Red Hood, he is just dressed as the Red Hood. He's in a mercenary group with my son, he does that. It's pretty easy to dress up as someone who doesn't show their face for a job. Jason's no Red Hood, let me tell you that. Or I guess I don't have to tell you that, since you've already arrested him."

Jason's not really sure if he wants to murder Oliver or not.

Superman stares. Oliver raises a brow.

"So? Can I have him back, please, we have a family dinner today and we're already a bit late."

"...sure."

Jason gets let out. Oliver throws an arm around his shoulders as they walk towards the zeta tubes.

"I hate you, Queen."

"You're welcome, kiddo."

JLA does leave Jason alone after that, though, because every time they see him outside of Gotham, they just go "oh that's just Jason dressed up as the Red Hood again, move on" and Jason doesn't know if he should be annoyed or not. It does make his work easier, but at the same time, it somehow feels like an insult.

@malfiora found it for me so I'm gonna share it! I genuinely love this so much, it's such a Thing that would become part of Gotham's cultural zeitgeist.

Imagine the first time each of them heard some kids singing this?! Imagine if it's a cryptid Batfamily au and the song breaks containment before the other heroes know them? So much possibility, so much potential, I love it.

Listen... All I know is that the kids I babysit were singing that one Gummy Bear song and next thing I knew my brain made a parody

Bro, lovingly, there was a whole comic series about how Joker manipulated Jason's entire life and rebirth including Catherine's drug habit and him discovering Sheila and just, all of it.

It ended with some heavy implication that fans didn't like much.

It was top-tier Shakespearean-level drama and angst, it just also left Jason fans rabid with upset. There's also been a marked disinterest in stories that imply predetermination lately, in either "good" or "bad" sense, so it left even more people feeling sour.

. . . The Joker is the reason that Jason became Robin. This ain't a theory or anything, this is pure Batman 80's canon, my guys.

So, Joker shoots Dick, boom, no more Robin or whatever, but besides for that—

The museum heist that Ma Gunn was doing, the one that Jason dropped in on and Batman was there for blah blah blah I'm gonna assume you know what I'm talking about.

ANYWAYS That was a job Ma Gunn was hired to do by Joker's goons.

Joker is the reason that Jason became Robin.

. . . Anyways I figured this out while flipping through this thick ahh paperback I got of various Batman comics, and realized "Oh, damn, I got the comics where Bruce meets Jason!"

Score.

(Yes I buy things impulsively, sue me. Please don't, actually, I'm flat broke from buying Batman stuff...)

Man, sometimes I read a fic where their version of Superman is so flat he couldn't even cause a papercut and the favored characters are all "Superman is the type of person who always thinks he's doing the right thing" and "Superman doesn't accept criticism" and "Superman is a bumbling farm boy hick stupid head" and "the Justice League is a bunch of elitist hacks and their club is only to hype themselves up because narcissism".

And I gotta. Like. Okay? That's a take, I guess. That's an opinion. It always takes me out of the story though, because it's presented as a known fact of the world of the fic despite little to no indication of those truths being reflected in the rest of the fic. It's a weird whiplash and it always leaves me almost ravenously curious as to what influenced this perception.

Sometimes it's explained as an unreliable narrator, sometimes an author's note will shrug off responsibility with "someone has to be the asshole lol", and sometimes it seems to be really and truly genuine and that is fascinating to me. I want to know the why's. I want to take them for coffee and listen to their perspectives. I want to understand.

One of my favorite Batman and Superman team up comics has a pre-jl storyline where they don't trust each other just yet. And because they don't trust each other, they both leap to save the life of a criminal being thrown out a window - they can't be sure the other won't just let this awful person die "accidentally". And because they were both distracted by that, an innocent hostage ran into the street in a panic and was struck and killed by a truck.

It was such a needless death. It was so bullshit and pointless. Both Superman and Batman recognized the need for trust, the need to let themselves be known enough, vulnerable enough, to not have this happen again.

And can y'all imagine how both their stories might have changed if future writers, canon and fanfic alike, kept that character growth in mind?

Truly, this is the DC artists giving us a cheeky wink and a nod that not only do Tim and Bernard do freaky rooftop sex, they do freaky sideways building sex.

Every time a Gothamite tweets about seeing Batman and Catwoman getting frisky on a roof, Tim and Bernard one-up them. Pretty soon Gotham is like "BatCat, who? Red Robin and Tuxedo Maskless over there are doing things that defy both physics and public decency laws"

DC needs to give Tim Drake either an age-up + a new suit, or, give him the most badass, diabolical villain arc known to man.

I had years of pre-Internet existence. I had a soul and sense of self by the time the first bulky box of a home computer was installed in my Dad's office so he could have very important access to very important medical journals that were now on these websites! He didn't need to order them special anymore!

It's just wild to sit back now and look at my tiny insignificant personal timeline and see how the same place that helped my father deduce drug interactions is all these years later helping me deduce that I'm a monster-fucker.

wyd in this situation

Strawberry milk is so good frfr is better than actual strawberries because it doesn't make your mouth spicy afterwards

Strowburry melk

Comic book history is so much fun and such a fascinating way to measure the changes in society. In fact, it can be super interesting to measure any society by what censorship laws are in place at any point in time!

I'm not sure about OG Joker being gay, but I do know that sexual deviancy was not allowed to be shown, and since we queers are deviant by default, we weren't exactly in the spotlight.

If you're up for a good read, cbldf.org has a great article from 2012 by Joe Sergio. "Tales from the Code: How Much Did Things Change After the Enactment of the Comics Code of 1954?"

And Academia.edu is a fantastic resource for even more reading!

Me, skimming pages of Batman year one and two, with Jaybin: . . . The f#&% you mean Batman has killed before in self defense? •-•

WHAT!!!??? BATMAN HAS KILLED PEOPLE!?!?!? ._.

This... This messed with my character analysis so much.

WHAT. DO. YOU. MEAN?!

"I'm glad they're dead!" Careful, Jason, the writers took that singular comment and haven't let it go since.

Also, just shout out to Jaybin for being all cute and >:/ and :D

Casual Life Update:

Remember that cat my grandparents stole a few months ago? His name is Dos. Because he was part of a litter of 4 kittens. So they were named Uno, Dos, Tres, and Kevin, because the neighbors couldn't remember Quatro.

Grandma calls him Do-si-do and he follows her around when she takes care of her chickens.

I've been thinking about my farmer grandparents a lot lately, about the people they knew and the lives they've lived. About how American culture has changed so much in their lifetimes. About how Grandma had to leave her schooling to help support her family after her mother died of cancer. About how teachers would often lock my Grandfather out of their classrooms when he was excused for religious services and they'd humiliate him in front of his peers before letting him back in.

About how a lot of people - especially in these Internet spaces - see them now, as old farm folk, and dismiss them as uneducated. As stereotypes and caricatures to be derided. Without a word to them, people will assume them to be of no use, to be able to contribute nothing of value by their experiences, and capable of no grand thoughts.

It's a bitter taste to recognize, hypocrisy.

I think about how my Grandma insists that everyone should write at least one book in their lifetime. She has books of short stories, books of poems, books of essays, books of local recipes collected by the women's societies in the area. So many of them are self-published and freely given to her by her friends and family. I love that she can pick each one up and tell me about the author and how she, and I by way of her, is connected to this person whose thoughts are inked on cheap paper.

She has her own book almost ready to go. It's full of little poems and daily devotions, letters to people who are no longer around to receive them. It scares me, because she had been in my life for so very long and I do not want to trust her to my faulty, frail memory.