Does the mass-murdering criminal Jason "Red Hood" Todd canonically support the death penalty?
No, I can't find evidence that Red Hood supports the death penalty.
There is a difference between murder (illegal) and state-sanctioned killing (legal). Red Hood commits unlawful homicide. The death penalty is lawful homicide. Jason is a murderer. The death penalty is not legally considered murder. Commissioner Jim Gordon is a decorated military veteran, not a murderer.
Committing violence ≠ wanting the government to have the right to commit that violence. Batman and his allies brutalize criminals; they don't necessarily support the state brutalizing criminals. Red Hood kills some criminals; Red Hood doesn't necessarily support the state killing criminals. Catwoman doesn't necessarily support the state committing burglary. Et cetera.
The death penalty is administered by the criminal legal system. Jason does not like the criminal legal system (see some of his run-ins with the police). He grew up as an impoverished child who didn't believe in the system, he was raised by Batman to believe that vigilantes can make a difference that the system can't, and he became an adult criminal who still doesn't believe in the system. He's not interested in using the criminal legal system. He isn't interested in giving more powers and privileges to an abusive system that has wronged him and the people he cares about.
When Jason started up his villain business, the death penalty was legal in Gotham City. (See Detective Comics #644, The Joker: Devil's Advocate, Batgirl 2000 #19, Punchline #1.) The death penalty was also in place during his Robin run. Jason didn't argue in favor of the state having the right to kill prisoners, and the death penalty never addressed his complaints about the status quo.
Jason has rescued people from wrongful* imprisonment and the death penalty. Again, based on his own firsthand experiences, he has many reasons to believe that the system is broken. *Some of us would argue that locking any people in prisons tends to be wrongful and inhumane by default, but we could choose to accept the standard premises of crime fiction as without endorsing it as moral instruction.
Jason Todd is a criminal: a mass murderer, a terrorist, a villain. He does evil. He doesn't represent or support the legal system. He probably has the least political capital out of all the Batfamily-associated characters. He doesn't promote the death penalty. He commits murder—illegally, as a criminal, state-unapproved.
Some recent comics related to the topic:
Gotham Nights (2020) #11 "One Minute After Midnight", written by Marc Guggenheim
Red Hood and Nightwing team up to investigate the case of a man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to be executed. Both of them disapprove of how the broken criminal legal system botched this case.
Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #8 (2023), written by Matthew Rosenberg
"You familiar with Hannah Arendt's concept of Schreibtischtäter? Desk murderers? It's people who use the state to kill for them, so they don't have to get their hands dirty."
254 notes
·
View notes
I know this is beating a dead horse at this point, but I just started thinking about this the other day and...
How many people that were previously enemies has Sonic ACTUALLY befriended?
Like my knowledge of some old games and the handhelds ain't great, but...
There was Knuckles, who I think is the only one in the classic era.
He never really befriended Gamma in SA1, just left him to Amy.
Also he didn't befriend Chaos, just beat the anger out of him.
The next one was Shadow in SA2, although they're still kinda rivals?
I don't think Rouge counts in SA2 since she wasn't really an enemy of Sonic specifically, even in Heroes it's really Sonic and Shadow that start the fight.
Gemerl is a robot who was reprogrammed to be friendly, I wouldn't count that as "befriending someone".
Him and Jet are rivals in every Riders game, this never changes.
Blaze in Rush is someone that fought him and they became friends, so it's clear cut, she counts.
Silver in '06 does as well.
Do we count Shade from Chronicles? I think she had a boss fight. I know very little about that game but it's not canon, right?
Merlina is kinda a grey area? Like they were friends, he stopped her evil plans and was still nice to her. I don't know if in context that meets the criteria.
On top of that I don't think the Knights of the Round Table count. Sonic is there to take the swords and they work together at the end. I don't think there's any hard feelings, but don't know if this counts as "friends".
Sage could be the next example, but she's still loyal to Eggman. I don't think what they briefly shared was friendship as much as Sage wanting to save Eggman.
I haven't played Superstars but Trip doesn't even have a bossfight, does she? I don't think she counts.
Not looking at the method, just purely if they became friends down the line. Out of all of those, there's 4 total (if you count Shadow, which I do) with 1 it's complicated and 1 non-canon. That's very few when you consider how large the game cast is.
An overwhelming majority of his friends weren't ever hostile with him to begin with, like the Chaotix, Amy, Tails, Cream, Emerl, Big, ect. There's plenty of other cast members that are still have him on their shit list, like Eggman, Infinite (if he's alive), Fang, Metal, Eggman Nega, the Deadly Six...
Now I'm starting to wonder where this idea of it being a frequent even came from.
111 notes
·
View notes
🌧 rainymoodlet is in full hiatus mode! 🌧
hoo... absolutely sick to my stomach writing this. ✌ for more information, please read below! thank you all for following my stories, loving my bachelor challenge, and loving my little pixels as much as i do. 😊
Well, my darling fellow simblrs... it's happened. It's been a bit of a long time coming over the past few months, but I've finally decided to put my blog into a permanent sort of "hiatus mode". I am a person who is riddled with executive dysfunction and lack of self-control, and I know that if I don't legitimately cut myself off from Simblr™ and the disassociation it's allowed me, I will. not. quit. 😅
I originally joined Simblr back in 2021 during a really difficult and isolated time in my life. I haven't been able to speak much to it because of the legal issues it's tied up in, but Simblr became my escape whilst in the throes of seeking justice against my abuser in a time where my entire family had abandoned me, and my fiance and I were living alone in my parents' house with only the two of us to swirl in deep and massive depression. Sims has always been my escape; from 2004 onward, it has given me narrative control and visual fantasy for as long as I can remember, and it will always be a deeply comforting and "safe" game for me.
But when I joined Simblr, it was out of many of the reasons that I think we can all relate to as writers and creatives. I had the idea for Loved by the Sun, and as I kept imagining and writing and building this world, I thought: "I deserve to show this to people. I really want people to see this. And I really want them to think it's good." I had been existing on the fringes of Simblr on my own personal Tumblr blog: I've seen countless legacies rise and fall, countless dramas spread out across blogs that are no longer active and haven't been for years. I wanted people to wake up and roll over and check my blog, desperate for updates, eager for more.
And more than anything, I wanted to escape the day-to-day hell I was living in.
But as the years went on, I've noticed that the excitement and creativity that drove my creation of my account has dwindled beyond measure. And I will put that on myself - starting a Bachelor Challenge like Kiss Me in Komorebi was one of the beginning nails in the coffin of my creativity and enjoyment of Simblr. I do not regret it one bit, and I am so grateful for the following it's gained and the genuine enjoyment you've all had with KMiK. It's my proudest achievement, it's pushed me to be a better editor and a better screenshot-taker, it's challenged me in my way of playing and it's introduced me to so many wonderful people.
But of course... I me'd it up. 😎
I've become obsessed to an egregious degree with the perception of my handling of this challenge. I want everyone to feel as though their sim gets enough screen-time, I want everyone to feel that the creative effort they put into submitting their sims was respected, and I desperately don't want anyone to feel left out or as though they're being ignored in favor of other contestants. It became so much less of telling Dan's story and journey, and all about how I was appearing as the Master of the Game.
And to be honest, my obsession with "staying relevant" in the fast-paced scroll of the Simblr Dashboard, believing you all would stop caring or stop reading if I didn't post as quickly as possible, was my own doom from the start, fkdfdjk.
In my life, I've had countless opportunities to turn my life around and start changing for the better. And time and time again, the energy that could have gone toward improving my situation or bettering my relationships has gone toward Simblr, and this online environment. I have practically no life beyond the screen: my days off are spent taking screenshots or spending four hours on builds that I still won't finish, obsessed over every angle, desperately seeking out that ~sparkle~ of simplicity and not-trying-too-hard I apply to all of your screenshots.
I am a dopamine and serotonin fiend, and though I can pinpoint in my life where trauma and isolation has pushed me to my online spaces, I was hyper-aware of the reality that in a few years, I won't be involved in Simblr. I won't be posting constantly, I won't care about the mods or the updates or the custom content.
And the stories I've written will be monuments to the time I've wasted, working on chasing the serotonin monster instead of bettering my own life and my own situation.
And now, I've got a real chance to do something better with my life. My fiance and I are at a crossroads of choice - we can change our lives for the better this year, or we can accept that the years of inaction we forced ourselves into out of the fear of moving forward have doomed us to a life we're not happy with. And I am one stubborn bastard when it comes to giving up.
The friendships and connections I've made here are some of the most meaningful in my life, and I hate that I've pulled back in the way I have. Along the way, it became much more about the notes, the numbers, the interaction, the reblogs over likes - and I lost myself and my friendships to my own mismanagement of my time and energy. I could spend five hours on one build, going from 7am to 12pm in a lightning speed of disassociation and obsessive Alt-clicking, and at the end of the day sit there and go...
What the hell have I done today? I could have messaged someone, I could have chatted with my friends, I could have done something. But no, I built a science lab, or a date location, and fretted the entire time until my stomach felt sick that it just "wasn't right" or wouldn't "look the way I wanted it to" in my screenshots.
I deeply, deeply love my stories, and I am so proud of them and what they've done for y'all and how you all have enjoyed them. I am incredibly lucky for the experience I've had on Simblr, and I know that there are plenty of blogs out there that sit with little interaction when they deserve so much more.
And yes, I will admit. The tendency of a 15-minute slapped together CAS edit of mine getting more notes and spotlight than the posts of my stories I've put legitimate effort into has fucked with my brain.
Simblr has changed from the story-laden place it was when I was following y'alls stories and legacies from 2015 onward. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that! Online spaces shift and change just as much as the social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, that go through trends and phases and fads and memes the same way we do. We are not above other social media in that regard, and I think there's a general sense from Simblr that we're some isolated island; we don't follow trends, we don't have fads, we don't have audio trends that get slapped on every other six-second video.
But I will raise you the Blender Phase and the Edit Phase as evidence every time.
I need to take some serious introspection time, and commit a lot of my energy to things that can bring me positive change outside of this online space. I hope to be able to come back as a better, healthier person, but to be honest, I don't really know when that will be. (Even this post is something I feel I have to do to be responsible, not just disappearing in the middle of this Challenge, leaving you all hanging djfh) I hope this doesn't come off as some high-horse rant, or leave a sour taste in y'alls mouths.
I just... I'll really miss this space. I'll miss the sims, I'll miss you guys, I'll miss your posts and your legacies and your sense of humor. I want to thank so many people, but I don't want to tag you all and shove this post into your activity streams dkfd.
I can't give any commitments to appearing more in Discord or even being present on this space - I've gone to the point of disconnecting the Chrome browser that's for rainymoodlet from my main icon bar, like I am going straight cold-turkey. I'll still be playing Sims, but I'm going to try and reconnect with it for myself - not for the screenshots, not for the stories, and not for the desperate want for people to understand what I'm posting or for it to make sense or satisfy, dfkj.
I am so, so incredibly grateful for every single one of you, and I hate to just drop this out of nowhere. But I need to do this, for me and for my future. And now I'm just sitting here like "Shannon, it's simblr, fucking chill." dkjfd I JUST... this space has done so much for me, and I genuinely feel a sense of loss in leaving. Especially in the middle of a story, fkgjfkg.
I really do genuinely love and care for you all. Please take care of yourselves, okay? Mama Shan does genuinely want the best for you, and I can't thank you enough for letting little old dorky ass me be a part of your community and your lives.
'Til next time, y'all. I'll see you soon. 💛
117 notes
·
View notes