#post crisis red hood is a fascinating character (uh. usually. there's a lot of bad writing) who i like a lot

[bitimdrake]

I was wondering if you could also argue if the cold and uncaring Jason we see in the Lost Days could also be only a temporary side effect. iirc Jason goes on a whole speech about how if their positions were reversed Jason would have stopped at nothing to avenge Bruce. That doesn’t sound to me like someone who doesn’t have empathy or compassion, and it sounds to me like he still on some level cares about Bruce. He also doesn’t seem interested in killing him anymore, either. Idk if this is a valid interpretation but I personally think that if Jason was cold and lacked compassion because of the pit it could have worn off by the time UtRH starts and his actions from then on are due to trauma.

okay back around to the inbox.

First thing that I'll repeat just for the record (and anyone reading) is that what parts of Jason's behavior/personality change, if any, are due to the pit vs trauma is completely up for interpretation.

There are many valid interpretations there, and it's really just headcanon at that point. But, practically speaking, I think the difference doesn't truly matter. If the pit is influencing him, it doesn't have an off switch, it's not some second personality or sudden mood swing; it's just a new part of his personality. Whether the pit or trauma, it comes to the same.

That said, my vibe on whether it wore off at the end of Lost Days would actually be...largely the opposite?

Lacking empathy or compassion isn't the same as not caring about anything (and definitely isn't the same as not having strong emotions). I think Jason can absolutely be cold and compassionless, and still have intense feelings towards Bruce, including the pain of loving his dad.

But more than that, I would honestly argue that Lost Days Jason is the most empathetic [post-crisis] Jason gets after his resurrection, and it only goes down from there. imo his coldness and compassion or lack thereof are easiest seen in the way he interacts with the random background characters of the world, not how he interacts in his relationship with Bruce--the closest and more volatile relationship he has.

Like, Lost Days sees Jason not just killing traffickers, but also going out of his way to save the kids they imprisoned. It sees him stopping a terrorist attack in London just because he's there. More violently and with far less remorse than he would have as Robin, absolutely--but still going out of his way to do a good thing for others that he didn't have to do.

But even by the final issue, Jason is letting the Joker go because he realized he doesn't care about the world, not compared to his own catharsis. When we get to Under the Hood, he tells the gangs he takes over not to deal to kids...but that's pretty much it for putting any good into the world. Otherwise Jason is just killing people he deems bad enough, and profiting off the gang activity he allows to continue (including drugs, racketeering, prostitution, etc).

His final goal to confront Bruce is very personal and very emotional, but he really doesn't seem to care about any collateral damage along the way. (And in here is also when he beats up Tim for his own reasons.)

After that his characterization is very scattered [conclusions at the end] but--

(He provides some helpful information in Outsiders. He sort reaches out to Dick in Nightwing...but does so by framing Nightwing for murder, with zero pause shown over the people he bloodily kills along the way. He doesn't hurt Mia when he kidnaps her in Green Arrow, but he still, yknow, kidnaps her, and kills various henchmen and underlings along the way. He has a weird side adventure with Donna and Kyle in Countdown, where DC plays around with his being an ass but not an antagonist.

And then he ignites gang tensions so he can use the "kiddie gangs" to pick each other off. He sorta reaches out to Tim to work together, and then shoots at him when he refuses. He's perfectly calm when Tim breaks him out of jail and lets him into the cave, and then goes off the deep end, kills dozens of petty criminals, and tries to murder all three of his brothers.

He keeps killing and threatens to expose Dick and Damian's identities. He gets arrested again and this time breaks out by putting poison in the food that kills almost a hundred inmates at random, with zero way he could possibly have known who would die. He recruits a traumatized young victim of Professor Pig to essentially be his new sidekick, but also seems to kinda care for her in his own way.

It's a lot, and it's messy, and the writers really should have been more coherent. Certainly the Doylist explanation for the slip into worse behavior is a series of writers who preferred to use him as a villain.)

But trying to force it into some form of sense, my take is this:

Jason never stopped caring about the people he cared about before he died. He still loves Bruce. He still feels something positive, if more complicated, towards Dick. He still cares, in the abstract, about kids in general. He can form new connections, like Scarlett, if extremely rarely. But it's muted. He prioritizes his own desires over his loved ones' feelings or comfort or even safety. He doesn't flinch at hurting them anyway, if it gets what he wants.

And with the people outside that--the majority of the world--who are not personally important to him...he feels basically nothing. This is where his lack of compassion is most pronounced: the people he has no hesitation in hurting or killing, even if they're nothing but collateral damage to his ends.

And that gets worse the longer things go on. He cares more about the world at the beginning of Lost Days than he does at the end. He's already a bad guy in Under the Hood, but even then he still has some shreds more care for Gotham that he will in Battle for the Cowl or Batman and Robin.

He feels very strongly! He is, in fact, entirely motivated by his strong emotions, sometimes to the point of constructing a thin moral veneer around then to try to sway his old family. But that's separate, it turns out, from actually caring about others.

#* #ask #anon #*dc #dc #dc meta #jason todd #post crisis red hood is a fascinating character (uh. usually. there's a lot of bad writing) who i like a lot #he is also not a good guy #and there is no sign at the end that he's going to become a good guy #(not really at you anon but as an aside:) #but we all want him to be better. and we have the hindsight of knowing post-flashpoint he snapped suddenly to being a good guy #and i think that enough people now are all imagining this arc where he went from bad to good #that it's easy to start believing it actually happened #instead of being purely the off panel effect of a universe reboot #anyway idk #the inconsistent writing leaves him very up for interpretation but here is mine