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insanescriptist · 1 day

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[Transcript:

Bill (Professional Henchman), wearing a black medical face mask, standing guard against a door: *to himself* "God I hate morning patrols. At least when I'm not on night patrol I'm not getting hit by Batman....Although I do have to wake up early so I might actually prefer getting hit by Batman."

Random Henchman (face exposed): *comes down the stairs* "Hey, man, Boss just called and said I'm gonna be guarding the door with you tonight."

Bill: "Sounds good. Whoa hey- where...where's your mask, man?"

Random Henchman: "Ex..excuse me?"

Bill: "Last time I checked we're still in the middle of a fucking pandemic, man. There's a mask mandate. Where's your fuckin' mask?"

RH: "Are you kidding?? Who fucking cares if there's a mask mandate, man. We're villains! We're henchmen, we're evil - we break the law all the time! It's literally our job!

Bill: "We're villains and we break the law, but we're not fuckin stupid. We still listen to science."

RH: "Maybe you do."

Bill: "What the actual fuck are you talk- we're working for a super scientist right now! That is Mr. Freeze in there!"

RH: "Don't be so fuckin' paranoid."

Bill: *closes eyes* "Tell me that a henchman in Gotham City did not just tell me to not be paranoid!!"

RH: "Fuckin' whatever. Still not wearing a mask, dude."

Bill: "Yes, the fuck you are! Or Imma report your ass to the Goonion!"

RH: "Fucking come on! Seriously, dude?"

Bill: "Absolutely! I am more concerned about my and everyone else's safety than your fuckin' friendship. Go put on a mask or you're getting reported, asshole."

RH: *glare*

Bill: *pointed look*

RH: "Fine. Fuck." *turns around* "God, you're a prick."

Bill: *calls after him sarcastically* "I'm sorry for caring about the people around me, you fucking heartless asshole!"

Bill: *mutters indistinctly to himself* "...don't even like wearing these things...get this shit over with..."

*waits*

Bill: *muttering again* "...fuckin' vaccinated, Jesus...for christ's sake..."

...

Bill: "...he go buy one from the 7/11? Where the fuck is he?"

RH: *coming back down* "I got a mask you fuckin' asshole."

Bill: "It's about fuckin ti...ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??"

RH: *wearing a Cobra Commander full face helmet* "What? You said a mask! This is a mask!"

Bill: "You know good and goddamn well I meant a face mask!"

RH: "Sor-ry, but I don't carry medical grade face masks everywhere that I go!"

Bill: "Yeah, because the Cobra Commander helmet is so much more reasonable than having a- why do you have that?"

RH: "I'm a hench for hire okay? The Goonion sends me wherever I need to go and the last place I went was goddamn Cobra headquarters in Springfield!"

Bill: "That's from a another villain's henchman? That's even more reason you can't fucking wear it!"

RH: "D'you want me to wear a fucking mask or not??"

Bill: "I will just loan you a mask! Just take the helmet off!"

RH: "You mean you made me go through all this and you could have just loaned me a mask this entire fuckin time?"

Bill: "You're on year two of this motherfucker! Everyone has a mask! I did not think I was going to need to get you one or you were going to wear a fucking Cobra helmet! Take it off!"

RH: "Fine! Fuck. Goddamn it." *moves to take it off*

Bill: *mutters in disbelief* "Un-fucking-believable."

RH: *struggles with helmet, grunting*

Bill: *eyeroll* "What fuckin' now?"

RH: *muffled* "It's stuck."

Bill: "What."

RH: *frustrated groan* "It's fucking stuck, okay?"

Bill: *shakes head in disbelief* "How did you make it out of training?"

RH: *more frustrated groaning* "Are you gonna fucking help or not?"

Bill: "Fuck. Here." *pulls down helmet and feels around it* "There's a latch in the back."

RH: *grunt of approval* "There you go. Think you got it."

Bill: *stands back* "Alright. There. Jeez-"

RH: *pulls off helmet to reveal Red Hood helmet underneath* "Awesome. Thank you."

Bill: "Fuck!!!" *stumbles back and runs*

Red Hood: *to himself* "Nice to know they're at least staying safe. Welp." *cocks gun* "Time to fix that."]

#pandaredd

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insanescriptist · 1 day

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#thepandaredd #DC

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insanescriptist · 3 days

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See look, the thing was, Jason as a kid was absolutely 100% a liar. Not that anyone really ever called him out on it, but you didn't live four years on the street without seeing shit. Choosing masks and marks and praying you'll live through your mistakes. Seeing people who didn't. Who weren't good enough, lucky enough or useful enough. Like with everything else good with Jason (according to everyone else), that happy boy facade died in a warehouse but it had been cracking for months before that.

Sure, it wasn't entirely a facade -that's what made it such a fantastic lie- but Jason's big mistake was thinking that their relationship, that it had become true on both ends, instead of a lie he had crafted on his. He didn't even think B lied on his. Fake it till you make it. B said look to the evidence and the evidence said, before his death, that Jason was his son. B had adopted him, trained him, treated him as his child. In and out of the leotard and pixie boots.

After his death, under the headstone Todd. Not in the Wayne family cemetery. Not his son. No, in the cave, where the heart of Batman was, Jason had been a good soldier.

Batman collected trophies from his cases. Once he had come back as Red Hood -a very petty fuck you to Bruce and psychological warfare on Joker- the memorial case existing had been a brilliant red flag.

How did that quote go?

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones;

Jason knew that B believed that about him.

It was no wonder their relationship never mended beyond their stark ideological differences. It was well and good to believe that all deserved redemption and the chance atone. It worked sometimes. But B was at his heart, a classist fuckhead, who didn't understand the really, all he was doing was prolonging the suffering of the victims who deserved justice and not the Joker's insanity plea. Again and again. And again. And again.

Kind of like this whole society was a classist shitstain through genetic lottery.

You had your winners. The Heroes.

You had your average joes and janes.

You had your losers. The Villains.

And then you had the fuckwads creating this status quo, allowing society to fuck everyone over. Bread and circuses, except less Flying Graysons and more children gladiatorial battles as preparation for a life and a paycheck to hunt down those that "deserved it," for breaking the law, when society had broke them first.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the Mystical Shit™ then Jason would have thought he was reincarnated into a personal hell dimension full of everything he hated.

They didn't even have proper heroes here! These incompetent shits stayed dead! But what else could you expect from Heroes under a government body? Even the villains under the government bodies he was used to had access to health care from death ala Lazarus.

Where the fuck were the Wallers here?

Jason really fucking hated it here. Six months into a stable identity and a stable place to live and he still hated this world.

Even this shitty apartment was still several steps up from the level of grime he expected. Not enough urban blight. No serious grit. No personal stakes in the hero vs villain rivalries. No real drama. No stakes beyond the petty everyday shit.

Oh, a purse snatcher. A hero is there. Oh, someone robbed a liquor store. A hero is there. Oh no, somehow an entire building is on fire. No worries, a hero will rescue you and fuck themselves up because despite the training the allegedly had, they don't have the equipment on hand to protect themselves from the smoke. What a heroic sacrifice when the fire department could do it just the same but without ending their own career over it. Basic shit.

There were still the fucked up "villains" who just wanted to hurt people. That sort of thing was just endemic to human biology, which these people were. Allegedly. 4 outta 5 people being born metahuman -sorry, with Quirks- and having powers before they had finished potty training and then having their entire lives defined further by genetic lottery, on top of the normal shit politics of wealth and otherness defining their life path.

Jason wanted to burn the whole Hero Industry down. But that's wasn't a new feeling for him now. A whole year into this fucked up world -no Gotham, no Star, no Watchtower- and he still hated everything about it.

Now the question was, how to avoid martyrs.

Martyrs were the bane of any killer, mercenary or assassin. They wanted to die for a cause. It would get the cause more publicity and thus more power. So the obvious solution was to either not get caught killing them or to dismantle the cause.

Both however was better.

Accident someone who was holding some uh, compromising evidence. Whoops, now there's an investigation. Point it out to the news.

Do a little murder. Frame it the right way. Let the police take care of it. It's an average joe. Just works for a hero.

Oh, no. It looks like there's corruption in the hero business. Except the government body over Heroes says, "no, that's just an outlier."

So again and again. Throw a little dirt there. Some accelerate here on the internet. That shiny image isn't as shiny anymore. Take a break. Let things roll, reassess and then plan and progress some more. Change up the MO enough and space things out enough it looks like coincidence. Maybe to the suspicious mind, multiple actors. Multiple cells. Espionage, not his forte, but Jason could dabble in it well.

In the mean time, tonight is a night in. Gotta moisturize and dye his hair again. Forgetting the eyebrows again would be awful; the brow gel was so expensive and so much upkeep compared to just dying it. Mascara at least was quick and cheap.

---

Jason was technically 3 hours into a movie marathon, watching the most recent movie adaptions of classical literature, judging them for their lack of technical skill. Because why have that when there's quirks that can do the same thing?

Basically in this reality anything that could have been done with a quirk was done with a quirk. So special effects? Oh, quirk. Easier to hire someone to breathe fire or something than to get a professional at pyrotechnics or CGI it in. Illegal yes, but no one really cared about the "no quirks in public law without a government permit," unless they were using it to commit crimes or seemed threatening.

Thankfully Jason was always capable of multi-tasking. He had his laptop out, working on a paper. Presumed dead this body was, but Jason had papers that said he was a living person.

Complete with a fucking quirk registration. Because that was also so important to this fuck up society. Positively Orwellian.

Ice quirk, his papers said, because while this body had the instinctual response of lashing out with fire, Jason had been working with the ice. Safer and easier to do that inside than playing with fire and his skin would thank him for it. He may not like this body, but he was at least going to take care of it.

His skin looked more like normal skin now, thanks to some regular moisturizing with the Skin Restorative Serum Knock-off, better known as Skin Goop™ but it wouldn't ever really get back to what it should be. Thankfully he had an explanation for that. His papers said his sad tragic backstory was his family was dead in a fire from a villain and hero fight, he survived with burns and amnesia and now was finishing his schooling online because of having missed so much school and other psychological bullshit that Jason could pull out of his ass like magicians pulled bunnies out of hats.

As much as the stagnation of technology was an anomaly in this dimension -apparently this is what happened when all your "villains" were meta-humans instead of "normal" people with PhD's- it did make faking out his backstory a whole lot easier. Japan had family registries and so it wasn't just a fake identity for himself, but for a whole damn family lineage. That also had to be tied to a real enough one for quirk falsifying purposes and that meant so much fuckery. False taxes, false schooling, falsifying bank records so he could live off of the "life insurance." Which yes, thank you fraud. Steady paycheck, no work. Not enough for vigilante expenses but enough for civilian expenses.

Jason took his time making Himura Touya existent.

Loner in school due to poor health. Yeah, the clinic he used to go to closed down while he was in the hospital. Records lost. Whoops. Yeah, the private school he used to go to developed a leak, so the paper records turned to mush. Electronic records were much more easily faked, but it still took time.

Like it was obviously sketchy as fuck if anyone dug deep and did the legwork and did actual asking but it was a credible enough fake to the rest of society.

So he had a shitty apartment but still better than he was used to for a shitty apartment. He was getting valid credentials for an Official Civilian Life with Normal Things™ like potentially college. That he didn't really need but was absolutely something to do to fill out his time with beyond taking down the Hero Industry.

Plus the insurance fraud money wouldn't last forever and having an official income made it harder for people to think "why doesn't he have a job if he has all these nice things?"

Yeah, even in this world, with the very much real labor shortages, minimum wage sucked. So much of the world was focused on the hero industry and what supported it, that it was absolutely sickening.

But that's what some middle of the week stress relief was all about. Stopping traffickers, rescuing people and arson.

Because why would someone with an ice quirk be a suspect for someone using a fire quirk to make a big ol' fuck you to the world?

Besides, some stress relief was being covered up (and not by him) and well, that's another scandal.

Cremation is just another fun(erl) service

So blaming random 4am thoughts that have been plaguing me all day for this

----

Jason woke to a bright room, thin sheets and the smell of a hospital embedded in his body.

First as always, assess. Hospital. No affiliation printed on the walls or anywhere. Private room, but small. That door looked like it led to a private bathroom. Generic flower picture, a mounted screen turned off. Really fucking bright sunlight from the windows.

There was no fucking way he was in Gotham then. Everything was too nice. Normal by standards outside of Gotham. There were blinds, not metal shutters. The walls were cleaner than Gotham allowed outside of Downtown and he could see greenery through the window.

Okay. So what had he been doing? Jason remembered and then wished he had his Jerichos to shoot himself with. Mystic Shit™. Okay. Okay. That was not one of his better ideas, but if he's recovering in a hospital, it worked. World saved.

So recovery. How fucked was he?

His skin looked so fucked. Which meant he had been worse. He's had time to recover and lose muscle tone in, going by how twiggy his arms were. His hands looked good. Clearly someone knew he cared about those if they went through the effort of restoring those.

Hmm, that was odd. No matter how much Jason hated the Lazarus Pits and all its by-products, it would have been a faster and more simple way to recover from near-death than the long incarceration in a hospital for a John Doe.

Jason wasn't sure if he'd been abandoned yet again by those who called themselves his family because he could, "take care of himself," or if he had been written off dead. Again.

Hospital beat the coffin by a long shot.

And it was with that cheery thought, a nurse -obvious meta human nurse- came in and burst into excited Japanese, because that was of course, his luck.

It's after the nurse and doctors leave that Jason loses his shit.

It looks like he's sulking in bed, but mentally everything in his head is exploding. Imploding.

Three. Fucking. Years. Coma.

Burn victim so bad they not only expected him to die in the first couple of days, but still expect it because of the infection risk his fucked up skin represents.

Still the conversation with the medical staff -of varying degrees of bizarre- was enlightening.

No, he has no idea who he is. Did he ever get anyone visit? How did he get here?

Of course some amnesia is to be expected. No, some of the nurses visited. No one knows how he got here.

Does he know what his quirk is? Uh?

Trauma blocked amnesia, the doctor mutters.

What's the last date he remembered?

Saturday. Maybe? The last year? No, I'm pretty sure my memory is shit and I'm trying hard not to freak out over not knowing anything. So could I get the year number?

And then there's the fucking year number. Once he got it translated into more normal terms.

Mystic Shit™ said fuck you to the future.

Except Jason knows this is not his future. Again, if it was, this would have been treated as a fucking inconvenience. Effective skin restoration goop -the proper name escaped him- was easily available to those with the right connections. A normal baseline human with 2nd and 3rd degree burns would be fine in less than two weeks with it, with nary a trace to show for it.

Thanks to the three year coma, his muscles were all atrophied as fuck, despite their best attempts at physical therapy. Because of all the burns and later burn scars and infections making it basically impossible to actually do fuck all about maintaining muscle tone until he was basically burnt skin and bones anyway.

He was so fucking weak now. It wouldn't last forever. He'd escape this hospital before he was discharged, before whatever "benefactor" showed up for whatever "purpose," he was suppose to serve now, as they had the medical debt over his head or was threatening his loved ones or whatever. If one didn't show up in the next week, he was losing his genre-savviness, because shitheads always wanted to claim shit, if it looked useful.

And Jason was used to looking useful, until he was no longer useful and they just didn't care. The amnesia made him less shiny, but Jason couldn't pull off the brain dead zombie imitation without actually being a brain dead zombie crawling up out of his grave.

So under the thin hospital sheets, Jason twitched his muscles.

Two weeks of emotional freak outs, watching the news, physical therapy and drugs Jason had had enough.

And he broke out.

----

Yeah, he regretted it almost immediately. Hard not to in the stupid paper gown, barefoot and bare ass.

Thankfully people were people, even with the plethora of meta humans he had seen, so it actually wasn't hard to find clothes. Someone left a hoodie in their car and Jason broke into said car. Put on the hoodie. Hotwired the car and drove off.

Somehow for being in the fucking future by two centuries and change, cars really hadn't changed. More evidence of Mystic Shit™ slamming him sideways.

He drove to the next town over, picked another direction, drove some more. Parked the car near what looked like a chop shop, negotiated the car for some money. He probably got ripped off, but better than nothing.

He walked to a corner store, bought some flip-flops after bullshitting an excuse that his had broken. First aid stuff. You know, for his feet. Hair dye in three different colors, because Rose Wilson could pick out a bad dye job at a hundred meters and so Jason learned how to dye his own hair properly so as to avoid her mockery, only to get mockery (affectionate) anyway.

It was a mix of instinct and lifelong observation that let him find an empty apartment quickly. He stole some sweatpants and passed out on the bed.

----

The thing is, Jason doesn't regret his crimes like Bruce thinks he ought to do, with a massive pity party and flaming self-hatred and punching criminals instead of shooting them. He hates the necessity of doing crimes, even if that crime is a net gain to society, but that's why all his serious crimes are premeditated. He's homicidal, not a psychopath.

Not Pit-mad either, no matter what the rest of them might have thought.

Again, he's homicidal, not a psychopath. And when he doesn't have to be some sort of costume soldier to be discarded by family for the disgrace of disfiguring the memory of a dead boy? He's actually chill and boring.

That is to say, he crashed at that apartment for three days, felt progressively more like himself, especially after the dye job -white hair all over, now a solid and boring black- but it still didn't change all the other issues the Mystic Shit™ inflicted on him.

This body isn't actually his. Too young, scars not right where the burns didn't fuck him over. Thankfully his existing coping mechanisms for dysphoria work and it's shoved to the side.

It's also a shit body. Not even a month out of a three year coma with inadequate -by his standards- of medical care. It's weak and building muscle to do everyday civilian shit, is going to take months to do. Pushing as hard as he did during the escape wrecked him the next three days. Jason may not know what's going to happen, but with his luck, it's going to suck and training is preparing to make it suck less. The only certainty he's got is that his skin or lack thereof is going to kill him from infection if he doesn't fix it.

He's got no legal identity here. Which basically puts him back onto familiar ground of legally dead.

Beyond the lack of paperwork, he's got a lack of funds. He also has no easy target to steal funds and equipment from, even just for fun.

For more disadvantages, he's in a different country, with different laws and a whole different culture. He would be climbing on board a fucking plane to Gotham, if it existed in this world, for some familiar ground.

He really is the unluckiest Robin. It also means he is also the most prepared Robin.

---

The first six months after waking up in this mockery world of heroics were the absolute worst.

He started at one foot in the grave and crawled out of it before the casket could really eat him alive. Jason had experience in casket busting. He didn't wanna repeat it.

He still didn't know who he was -in who was he inhabiting- but it wasn't like Jason had a lot to go on. 'His' quirk was thermo-manipulation, most obviously in the blue fire he could call to his hands but he could do some ice too; it was thanks to Duke's light and shadow manipulation that he had even tried for the duality. He had white hair. Presumably Japanese heritage but quirks had really erased or blurred a lot of racial lines. Also presumed dead and young.

Access to the Quirk Registry took some doing, but again, not everyone followed basic computer security, much less what it took to keep someone bat-trained out of their systems. Again, for nearly two centuries in the future, a lot of the technological development had stagnated. Searching through the Quirk Registry hadn't yielded any result but none of his other methods had struck anything either. And he had looked at the recently dead and/or presumed dead. Sure, he had some leads that looked viable, but he wasn't going to follow those up yet.

He had fixed a few of his most pressing issues the past six months. His ignorance of the local area, the local and national politics and so on. This world supported and had an entire industry catering to making child soldiers and sell their image and reputation to make money and more child soldiers that called themselves Heroes.

His weak ass body no long cried doing daily tasks and only hated him after working out. Yes, Jason was pushing it but he was well aware of how months of preparation could mean shit in the face of seconds.

His infection risk was severely reduced after quick research bender let him make the most generic knock-off brand of the skin restoration goop in a shitty homemade lab. Did it fix his skin being patchwork fucked in places? Some. He wasn't going to get feeling back properly, but at least he looked more normal. Maybe with enough moisturizing he might look a little less Frankenstien's monster.

He also had a cash inflow. It wasn't great, but it supported his apartment. And the second set of papers. And the 2nd apartment.

Which meant in grand old tradition for Jason, time for him to bounce to the next apartment and come up with a new name.

#Izzy does fic #jason todd #dabi #Jason truly is a dichotomy of “this is hell” and “this is nice”#and still getting slammed by dramatic irony #in multiple ways

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insanescriptist · 3 days

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Tips for writing those gala scenes, from someone who goes to them occasionally:

Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.

You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.

When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.

A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)

Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)

The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.

Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.

Members of the press generally aren’t allowed to freely circulate at nicer galas/events without a very good reason. When they do, they need to identify themselves before talking with someone.

#reference #writing

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insanescriptist · 4 days

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Cremation is just another fun(erl) service

So blaming random 4am thoughts that have been plaguing me all day for this

----

Jason woke to a bright room, thin sheets and the smell of a hospital embedded in his body.

So recovery. How fucked was he?

Jason wasn't sure if he'd been abandoned yet again by those who called themselves his family because he could, "take care of himself," or if he had been written off dead. Again.

Hospital beat the coffin by a long shot.

And it was with that cheery thought, a nurse -obvious meta human nurse- came in and burst into excited Japanese, because that was of course, his luck.

It's after the nurse and doctors leave that Jason loses his shit.

It looks like he's sulking in bed, but mentally everything in his head is exploding. Imploding.

Three. Fucking. Years. Coma.

Burn victim so bad they not only expected him to die in the first couple of days, but still expect it because of the infection risk his fucked up skin represents.

Still the conversation with the medical staff -of varying degrees of bizarre- was enlightening.

No, he has no idea who he is. Did he ever get anyone visit? How did he get here?

Of course some amnesia is to be expected. No, some of the nurses visited. No one knows how he got here.

Does he know what his quirk is? Uh?

Trauma blocked amnesia, the doctor mutters.

What's the last date he remembered?

Saturday. Maybe? The last year? No, I'm pretty sure my memory is shit and I'm trying hard not to freak out over not knowing anything. So could I get the year number?

And then there's the fucking year number. Once he got it translated into more normal terms.

Mystic Shit™ said fuck you to the future.

So under the thin hospital sheets, Jason twitched his muscles.

Two weeks of emotional freak outs, watching the news, physical therapy and drugs Jason had had enough.

And he broke out.

----

Yeah, he regretted it almost immediately. Hard not to in the stupid paper gown, barefoot and bare ass.

Somehow for being in the fucking future by two centuries and change, cars really hadn't changed. More evidence of Mystic Shit™ slamming him sideways.

It was a mix of instinct and lifelong observation that let him find an empty apartment quickly. He stole some sweatpants and passed out on the bed.

----

Not Pit-mad either, no matter what the rest of them might have thought.

This body isn't actually his. Too young, scars not right where the burns didn't fuck him over. Thankfully his existing coping mechanisms for dysphoria work and it's shoved to the side.

He's got no legal identity here. Which basically puts him back onto familiar ground of legally dead.

Beyond the lack of paperwork, he's got a lack of funds. He also has no easy target to steal funds and equipment from, even just for fun.

He really is the unluckiest Robin. It also means he is also the most prepared Robin.

---

The first six months after waking up in this mockery world of heroics were the absolute worst.

He started at one foot in the grave and crawled out of it before the casket could really eat him alive. Jason had experience in casket busting. He didn't wanna repeat it.

He also had a cash inflow. It wasn't great, but it supported his apartment. And the second set of papers. And the 2nd apartment.

Which meant in grand old tradition for Jason, time for him to bounce to the next apartment and come up with a new name.

#time for Izzy to slep #Izzy does fic #jason todd #dabi

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insanescriptist · 4 days

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You know I talked about Unhinged Tim & Dick

but I want to talk about Jason and Dick.

Cause yeah Jason didn't necessarily learn from Dick like Tim did but that is because Dick was never expected to be an authority to Jason. (Not just narratively but in canon if we pay attention to it. Dick was never expected to take care of Jason the same way he was for every sibling afterwards)

That means they probably play by different rules. They are probably close in that way that everyone would be like 'they hate each other'.

Dick and Jason probably don't even realize it. To them it is just how it is.

Like yeah of course they will tear each other apart verbally, then flip around ready to eviscerate anyone else that tried, and all would be forgiven with a shitty cold convenience store coffee with the correct amount of sugar and cream.

Oh yeah, Jason knows about every person Dick every killed or got close to killing, as cop/mercenary/spy/vigilante, except you know Joker, because it never came up. Dick brought the others up during a fight when Jason tried to be "oh boo hoo, you wouldn't know".

Dick, what do you mean YOU KNEW ABOUT THE GLOWING SWORDS? Dick sipping Starbucks raised eyebrow of Judgement 'you didn't?' To be fair he only found out because they were watching a supernatural episode (because 100% Jason had a phase as a preteen and now wants to get the new spn memes context even if he is gonna hate it), and well it couldn't hurt to double check. They were Fine and the swords were cool. Now they have semi every other weekend plans for the next few years, and Constantine gets nervous around them.

Jason and Dick just know all secrets of each other, but ask them what the other's favorite color is or some like surface level thing, and you gonna get 'why the fuck would I know that?.

They also probably don't realize how unhinged the other is, in a way that makes them even more unhinged together because 'well if they are like this then i need to match it' until you know suddenly you have villains and goons begging for any other pair after them. Red Hood, they can deal with. Nightwing, they can deal with. Red Hood and Nightwing, and suddenly harden criminals are screaming for Batman to save them. Much to the two's bafflement.

Even more baffling an old boy goon looking at Nightwing, going 'he brings out the first robin in you boy." like one says "he brings out the demon in you."

#dc #jason todd #dick grayson

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insanescriptist · 5 days

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#first Elmo #now veggietales #our childhood didn't mess around #so accurate

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insanescriptist · 9 days

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I'm curious. Reblog this if you know how to cook

I don’t even care if it’s macaroni, ramen or those little bowls you stick in the microwave. Please, I need reassurance that most of the population on tumblr WOULDN’T STARVE TO DEATH if their parents couldn’t fix them food or they couldn’t go out to eat.

#Izzy cooks #it's kinda what happens when your mom has a restaurant #you get to be glorified staff without a paycheck

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insanescriptist · 11 days

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A while ago I got under someone's skin for referencing Joker's surprising delayed reaction to killing Jason Todd, and since then I've been thinking it's worth digging into as an interesting element of Joker's characterization.

Of course, first thing's first: Jason's murder in Batman (1940) #427, as originally presented in 1988.

Jason has just reconnected with his biological mother, Sheila Haywood, at a famine relief camp in Ethiopia— and he's discovered that Joker is blackmailing her with information about her criminal past. She gets him truckloads of medical supplies to sell on the black market, and Joker restocks the trucks with toxin. While Bruce races to stop a tampered truck, Jason decides to help his mother on his own. When he discloses he's Robin, however, Sheila betrays him to Joker, not only to stay on Joker's good side but because she's actually been embezzling money from the organization she works for this whole time. She's afraid an investigation prompted by Batman and Robin's appearance would expose this fact.

So Sheila stands by as Jason is felled by Joker and his goons, and then the crowbarring starts.

It's bad! When we return later, Jason is presumably dead.

While Joker isn't shocked that he's murdered a child, he does have an unexpected reaction to Sheila's point. He hadn't really been thinking about what he was doing, implying that he hadn't intended to kill Jason. He just got carried away, whoopsie! He didn't do this to get at Batman; he wasn't thinking about Batman at all. Now, however, he's concerned about how Batman will react.

Joker thinks Jason is already dead. The purpose of the bomb is to get rid of the evidence of his involvement, including Sheila. Joker is not broken up about what he did, but he does have a sense that he's gone a step too far and he doesn't want Batman to know about it. At least for now!

In the end, while Jason wakes and he and his mother try to save each other, they're trapped in the warehouse when the bomb goes off. Bruce makes it back only in time to find a dying Sheila, who tells him it was Joker. When Bruce finds Jason, Jason gets no last words. He's already dead, and Bruce is devastated.

A clue from Joker leads Bruce to the United Nations in New York, and there, infamously, Bruce learns that Joker has been made the ambassador from Iran. Joker is now protected from prosecution, and Batman going after him risks an international incident. Bruce still very much wants to, but Superman stops him.

Well, mostly Superman. I recommend reading Batman #429 to see Bruce's full thought process on this. He is furious and constantly thinking about finally ending Joker— but he also questions his mental state. He still wonders if he can hold Joker responsible if he believes Joker is insane. He uses phrases like "what happened to Jason" like it was a natural disaster, not murder. He even confronts Joker to give him one last chance to turn himself in to Arkham Asylum. Bruce is in a kind of denial, still grabbing at how things usually go.

But back to Joker. Evidently, he's no longer worried that Batman will find out he killed Robin. Joker admits to it immediately.

I assume Joker realized there was no point in denying it. Is Batman going to think it's a coincidence that Robin got blown up when Joker was around? Though Bruce does say it's Joker's taunts that 100% confirm for him that the clown was responsible, pointing again to Bruce still grasping for reasons to not break his rule in his grief.

By the end of the issue, Joker has naturally tried to kill the entire United Nations assembly, which instantly made him free game. So Bruce pursues him to a helicopter, and an in-air scuffle ensues in which Bruce explicitly prevents Joker from being killed by friendly fire, evidently so he can decide how Joker will die. Bruce jumps out of the helicopter, abandoning Joker to a fiery crash. However, despite Bruce's (supposed) intentions, Joker's body is nowhere to be found. The clown lives!

So that's it, right? Joker felt some unease about killing Jason initially, but in a short time, he was happy to gloat about it to Batman's face.

But when Joker reappears in Batman #450, in 1990, he is not triumphant. He's holed up in a dilapidated building, where he learns someone is impersonating him.

How often do we see Joker upset by murders? When the story returns to him, we learn more about his mental state.

With all of Joker's cackling glee at the things he's done, coming close to actual death in the helicopter crash has jarred him— and not just the crash, but the murder that led to it. He recoils from the memory of what he did to Jason. It's why he can't see the joke anymore. It's set apart from his previous crimes. It's too far.

Which is not at all to say that Joker is completely broken up about Jason. By the end of #450, he rallies and sets out to go after his copycat and restore his reputation to his liking.

In Batman #451, though, Joker is still plagued by doubts along the way.

Even when he overcomes those doubts, claiming the mantle as the one and only Joker when his copycat dies by falling into acid, Joker challenges Gordon to finally kill him. It's reminiscent of The Killing Joke, the first time Joker went too far. But like TKJ, Gordon and Batman decide to get Joker back to Arkham against their more vengeful instincts.

Joker's also decided Arkham is just what he needs. Outside, he's plagued by the reality of what he's done; in Arkham, he can get settle back into his insanity and stop caring about it again.

So after that, Joker has no second thoughts about killing Jason, right? After all, he largely references the murder in callous terms. In-universe this makes sense as Joker revising history in his own head, particularly as more stories portray his effort to be more monster than man. Monsters don't have qualms about murder! But this is comics, so we can also presume that not all Joker writers know or remember #450/451, which I think is a shame. I find stories in which Joker expresses even just a degree of vulnerability to be more interesting than those where he's just mwahaha evil.

I have seen a few other bat stories bring some nuance into Joker's perception of Jason's death, though.

First up is the particularly nuanced "Fool's Errand" in Detective Comics (1937) #726, published in 1998. Bruce visits Joker in Arkham to get information on how to find a kidnapped girl who's running out of time. It just so happens Joker arranged this kidnapping to happen on a particular day.

I strongly recommend this issue for batjokes fans, as it revolves around Joker talking the case through with Batman in his cell to help him figure out more clues to a crime Joker himself planned. Even with Bruce beating Joker up, the conversational tone feels almost friendly. They're just doing their usual thing.

Well, sort of. Bruce has already said he's not in the mood, and he interrupts their conversation to say so again.

Joker could insist that Batman stay and keep playing the game, and needle him for being unwilling to merely talk to Joker to rescue this child. Instead, Joker gives up her location.

And Bruce does come back as predicted.

So that was Joker's nefarious plan. He wanted to restore some hope to Bruce's cynical soul to be sure that his future failures would hurt even more. But it sure seems the middle didn't go the way Joker expected, when he recognized Batman just wasn't going to play the game as usual.

Joker doesn't jump into taunting. He doesn't answer Bruce at first. He's withdrawn and reflective. He's got something else on his mind on this anniversary of the second Robin's death, and he knows that Bruce does, too. Perhaps not forcing Batman to play was a small gesture, acknowledging the difficulty of the day, remembering how things changed. And what does that gesture cost Joker when he still gets the outcome he wants?

Second example is actually also called "Fool's Errand," this one from Robin (1993) #85, published in 2001. This is a fun one in which Joker discusses his interactions and frustrations with the Robins.

But while Joker indicates more than once that he wants to fight Batsy alone, after he talks about killing Jason, this is the next page:

Joker does not then say he was relieved when another Robin showed up, but still. He's acknowledged again that when he murdered Jason, things were not right. As angry as the birdies make him, they're a key component in the game.

Then we come back to "Once More, With Feeling!" in Harley Quinn (2000) #25, from 2002. Harley's been playing double-agent against Batman with Joker, and she and Joker have this exchange.

Joker typically makes light of murdering Robin, but it seems that when he's with just about his only confidante, he lets other feelings about it burst out.

There's also a flashback to DitF in Batman: Gotham Knights #44 in 2003. We get an exchange between Bruce and Joker before Bruce jumps out of the helicopter.

Joker laughs as the helicopter dives, ready to die, but before that, he seems resigned. He doesn't throw in a real dig about murdering Jason, and he doesn't gloat that he's finally gotten Batman to kill him. He acknowledges he crossed a line.

Lastly, there's a 2006 exchange between, well, Joker and Jason himself in "All They Do is Watch Us Kill, Part 2" as part of Under the Red Hood in Batman (1940) #649. Jason has kidnapped Joker as batbait, and when Joker needles him, Jason needles him back.

Joker regularly extolls his own crimes, but suddenly one of his victims mockingly accuses him of putting up a front, of not being as coldhearted and untouchable as he wants to seem. Maybe Joker does doubt what he's doing and retreats under the cover of madness so he doesn't have to think about it— just as he did in Batman #451.

I'm not sure if there are other examples of Joker expressing anything but mocking glee about Jason's death. I do know of times he's shown a sort of fondness for Jason (such as in The Man Who Stopped Laughing #4, Gotham War: Red Hood #2, Suicide Squad: Get Joker #3), but that's not really the same thing. Joker could've seen Red Hood as his and Batman's Frankenstein child without feeling any squeamishness about killing him in the first place.

But if anyone knows of any other moments where Joker does not act like killing Jason is absolutely his most favorite thing he ever did, do share!

#DC #jason todd #joker

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