Okay But Jason Returns From The Dead Feeling Unwanted. He Doesnt Know Only Four Peoplefive If You Count

okay but jason returns from the dead feeling unwanted. he doesn’t know only four people—five if you count the preacher—came to his funeral, but it’s just the feeling of you come back to your old life thinking the world would still have a gaping hole in it where you fit, still raw and bleeding so you could slot right in. but the show’s over, the curtains are drawn, everyone exited stage left. you arrived back to this empty theater to find the props and sets all taken down, lights closed. you sit down in a seat in the front row gripping the seat handle until your knuckles are bone white, but the play is finished. you’re no longer a part of the Narrative and there is no place for you left

I swear some people forget Light is a genius too. Like sure, he may not be all there emotionally but he isn't a regular stupid teenager. He's a smart teenager. Being unsociable doesn't mean he's stupid. He may not follow the social rules but he knows what they are and what he should do. How do you think he's fooled people for so long? And why do you think it took until L for someone to see it? Because L is the same, except he doesn't bother pretending to follow the rules. L's whole plan is to get Light to stop pretending, cuz that's when Kira comes out. 

There’s a thing I see in fics sometimes where Talia has authority over Jason and she profits off of it by giving him tasks or missions, which is funny to me because there is not a single moment in Lost Days in which Talia has even the slightest bit of control over what Jason is doing.

Like when she first finds him and he’s catatonic? Yea okay, but he’s catatonic. As soon as he takes a dip in the Lazarus Pit and regains his mental capacities he just takes off like a rocket and everyone else has to scramble after him.

He goes rouge and tries to kill Bruce and Talia is like UHHH and attempts to stall him from trying that again by finding him instructors to hone various skills, and Jason goes along with it but also straight up murders about half of his teachers after he’s done learning from them, while Talia just watches with some pride but also mild concern in the background.

Throughout all of this he’s also leeching off of her bank accounts and contacts. Talia is getting nothing out of this arrangement

GIVE ME A DEATH NOTE MINION AU (not the little yellow fucks)

Like the Death Note just comes with tiny little built in shadow demons that are the ones that actually go out and steal the lifespan of the person whose name was written down

They look like a mix between a cat and a dragon, and are about the size of an eight week old kitten

Light fucking adores them to bits, one always sits and purs on Light's lap while he pets them as he schemes his evil plans, or rides on his shoulder when he goes out, there's always at least one with him

They follow the same rules as Ryuk, they can't be seen by someone unless they touch the Death Note they are bound to

They absolutely love Light as well because he actually gives them jobs!!! They haven't done anything for centuries, and this human guy has taken better care of them than any shinigami

They petition the shinigami king to just serve Light for the rest of his existence, best God of death ever 11/10

They are Light's #1 fans and so cute! They steal Kira merch all the time and wear it on themselves, and when ever Light is mad or frustrated they do the cutest little cheer routine to make him happy again and it always works

Light's trying to find a way to unbind them from the Note so that they will serve him instead of the owner of the book, and that way he can basically point at a criminal he wants dead and they'll know who he's talking about without him having to write the name down

Ryuk is immediately jealous because he was supposed to be Light's cool spooky companion but nooo the annoying little imps have him captivated

When he voices this Light's basically like:

"Will you give me unconditional love and support in my quest to become God of my New World?" Light asks as he idly pets a very happy and purring demon on his lap

"Eh, no—"

"Than shut the fuck up."

It's okay tho Light gives him apples and still bugs him sometimes

OMG MISA

Aaahh she would fucking love them too

SHE DRESSES THEM UP!!! Light and Misa have little demon fashion shows!!!

And who needs Light (the worst bf ever tbh) when she has these adorable little guys!!!

Oh Light is an absolute menace with these guys

They bring chaos where ever they go, and spite whoever Light doesn't like. That one teacher Light hates because he gave him a 99 over an "unclear answer" always finds his chalk broken, his coffee spilt, and continuously loses papers he needs. They can't kill without the Death Note, so they just fuck with whoever Light tells them to (rip L)

They miss Light during the Yotsuba arc so much, they hate Higuchi with a passion and will not listen to him anymore than they have to

OR unlike a shinigami you will always be able to see them after you touch a DN, even if you give it up. So Light just sees them when he's in confinement cause they didn't want to leave him and they try to entertain him while they passive aggressively torture L for doing this to their favorite master

L is IMMEDIATELY sus when Light seems less miserable in confinement, and whenever something goes missing? Kira. He stubs his toe? Obviously Light using his evil telekinesis. He mistypes a letter? Kira is afoot people.

That continues all of confinement lol

L kinda loves them too when he can see them after he touches the DN, cause they are pretty cute. He sneaks them his strawberries so they warm up to him a little, to Light's chargin.

I randomly got this idea and I LOVE IT and I will be drawing this *adds to my mental draw list of 29297r8e2o29 billion

athenasolives asked: Do you have any thoughts on meaning behind characters’ Japanese  pronouns (ie. Light using “boku”)? 

Yes!! I think the pronouns characters use are really interesting. As a disclaimer, I’m not a native Japanese speaker and have never lived in Japan myself, so my opinions are largely based on picking the brains of native-speaker friends and research. Unlike English, Japanese tends to omit “I” from sentences. Leaving in personal pronouns comes off as really odd and a sign that whoever is speaking that way is not a native speaker or that they’re on the arrogant/self important side. All of which is to say that personal pronoun choice is important and also interesting because they don’t usually come up in conversation unless for emphasis. As you mentioned Light, I’ll go over my thoughts on him specifically, but the subject of patterns of speech in DN in general could really just be its own tl;dr post, haha.

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Jason’s final monologue in Under the Red Hood is so impactful and important because he’s being honest. His speech hinges on the fact that he’s being open and honest with his feelings on how the last few years affected him. I’ve seen many people argue that because Jason is an unreliable narrator at times, that means he is an unreliable narrator all the time, therefore nothing he says can be trusted. Unfortunately, this feeds into the “anything can be canon behavior for Jason because he’s written so inconsistent therefore I don’t care and besides fanon is better anyway so there” argument where actual consistent character traits often get ignored.  

While, yes, Jason can be an unreliable narrator, and while, yes, Jason is written incredibly inconsistently, this doesn’t mean there’s nothing consistent about him. I remember a couple of years back, some people were arguing how absurd it was for Jason’s opening line to be: “Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me” because it would be impossible for anyone, especially “someone like Jason” to not hold a grudge against a person for not making it in time. They couldn’t buy the fact that someone could concede like that. Of course, Jason is lying here, how could he not, in some part, blame Bruce? But this completely side-steps that Jason does that all the time, pre and post-death. Some of his last words were forgiving Shelia for murdering him and apologizing to Bruce for not being good enough. He doesn't blame Catherine for forcing him into the parental role for both him and her and Jason usually places Willis strictly in the “it’s complicated” box. He constantly takes the fall in his tumultuous relationship with Bruce like his apology letter to the man at the end of TFZ. It’s not out of character for Jason not to place the blame on Bruce, but rather forgive him and dictate his ire to where the real blame falls: the Joker. Again, he doesn’t even place the blame fully where it belongs because he doesn’t mention Shelia’s role. (yes, DC wants us to forget about her role in his murder. Especially in UtRH as can be seen in all the bad robin!Jason rhetoric, but that outer world meddling affects the inner story) 

It’s a cop-out to claim that because Jason is unreliable at times and inconsistent at others that means you can subscribe whatever meaning you want to his words and actions. He’s not his own character anymore, he’s an OC to fit you’re narrative which strips him of his story. By saying he’s actually lying(whether over if he forgives Bruce or so he can blame Bruce later on because “he needs something to be angry over”), it strips away the farther-son tragedy of this moment.

Jason is having a contained breakdown. He’s trying to keep it together, and that’s why when his voice breaks on “doing it because–because he took me away from you” and he starts crying, it’s impactful. He’s raw and alive and it’s still not enough to be seen. He has no point to soften the blow with “I forgive you.” He has no reason to lie about that when trying to get his father to see him. If it was just about the joker then Jason could’ve said “I blame you for not saving me and to redeem yourself, you have to kill the Joker.” But Jason Doesn’t ask him to kill the Joker but instead demands to know why he’s free without consequence, why he is still breathing.

If Jason wanted “to push his goalpost farther with Bruce,” he would prey on Bruce’s blaring guilt complex. It’s incredibly telling and significant of Jason's character that he doesn’t do that in this moment. Therefore, we can assume that if Jason had succeed in killing the joker, he still wouldn’t use that to guilt Bruce.

Jason instead talks about how much he loved Bruce–still loves Bruce–and how the man meant the world to him, and how he feels used because he thought he meant the same to Bruce. By saying he’s lying in this moment to trick and ruin Bruce, you are undercutting some of Jason’s most consistent behaviors: his desire to love and be loved, his desire to be a part of a family, his desire to be important to someone, and how he will put up with almost any and all maltreatment to get that connection.

Jason “pushing his goalpost” further highlights how many don’t understand his emotional distress tied to his murder and instead want to place him solely in the “completely delusion” category where his victimhood is undermined. It’s not about getting Bruce to kill, at the end of the day, the ultimatum was to kill Jason, not the Joker, it’s about wanting his father to understand what he needs to feel safe. That is Jason’s request. Not the clown. Him. He’d rather his father kill him with his own hand so he’s not forced to live on the same earth any longer with and share the same air as his murderer. What makes this as an ultimatum is that Jason fully believes that Bruce loves him too much, therefore, the man would never kill him allowing Jason to achieve his peace. Whether you agree with Jason’s methods or not is a different matter, but that is the tension in this contained scene.

Furthermore, a lot of meta lately says that if Bruce had let Jason kill the Joker then he would guilt Bruce by saying “why would you let me do that? You tainted my soul and hands!” which ignores: 

A. Jason’s actual legitimate reason for wanting the Joker dead. The former belief falls back on the “Jason is so delusion and dramatic!” trope, the “he’s not the right kind of victim” trope because he’s angry instead of submissive and “actually has no good reason to be angry, he’s just being difficult for the sake of.” It completely undercuts Jason’s actual trauma with getting no justice. Bruce preaches Judge and Jury, but Jason got neither. So many victims get neither, and Jason’s anger represents that. What gives Bruce the right to say Jason’s not allowed to play his own executioner in relation to his victimhood when he never got the morals and ideals that Bruce himself preaches so thoroughly? 

And B. more obviously, Jason killed in UtRH before their big confrontation? Famously, the duffle bag of right-hand mans’ heads. He killed in front of Bruce already as well? Captain Nazi? Like, also in lost days, which is a prequel to UtRH, he kills? What’s the actual argument here? Loosely, It reminds me how everyone wants to blame the entirety of Jason’s takeover on pit madness. This “you’ve tainted me” argument sounds as if Jason is not aware of his actions and traumas. Not to say he’s completely sane or not delusional at times throughout his publishing history, but to think Jason would be pissed at Bruce for letting him kill the Joker is to dismissively say “no, you don’t know what you need, but I do.” 

No, the Joker being dead won’t fix everything, but with the joker dead, it would literally be removing a real-life constant trigger of Jason’s. Yes, Jason is a synecdoche for victims, but he is also that himself: a single victim. Joker is a stand-in for everyone who’s ever gotten away with a vicious crime free of judicial step-in or failure, but he also is just that: Jason’s murderer. Yes, they both metaphorically represent something bigger in this scene, but on a fundamental level, the Joker is also just the person tormenting Jason and nothing more. By saying Jason doesn’t actually want what he wants stands in for saying victims are too wrapped up in their trauma to understand what’s causing it. It’s mitigating and demeaning how bad it actually was/is. Jason’s murder in comics still holds such power over the mythos today even though “everyone’s died. He’s not special” for a reason and it’s because his life is actively shown to be affected by it.

Jason has been shown to have PTSD-induced panic attacks around the joker (Lost Days), and about the joker (famously the rebirth issue where Jason hallucinates murder victim him), it’s not far off the say that whenever Joker commits a mass atrocity, that it affects Jason in some way. 

And we canonically know that it does! In Lost Days, Jason breaks down in tears in the streets over all the families that have been and will be destroyed by the Joker. So that Survivor's Guilt train of thought is canon for him: “those people are never coming back, I’m here and I’m not supposed to be, but they’ll never return”-esque

No, killing the Joker won’t fix all of Jason’s issues and trauma surrounding his murder, but that’s obvious. Yet, have you ever been in a bad relationship and part of the issue is literally just being around that person? The healing process starts when you step away. You can’t heal in the same environment that’s harming you. This goes hand in hand with how Jason will only begin to heal as a person when away from Bruce because he’s such a dominating, constant trigger in Jason’s life (again, proven in canon when Jason backs away from Gotham and the Bats). No, the joker being dead won’t fix everything, but it will allow the process to begin where Jason isn’t constantly rehashing his trauma every time the Joker escapes. Jason has tried to heal on his own except the clown keeps coming after him. Whether it’s him attempting to burn off his face or in his mind when Bruce physically drags his murder to the forefront of Jason’s thoughts shoving him into a breakdown over how he’s trying so hard to heal. Part of the reason it’s so hard for Jason to move on is because his trigger buttons are constantly being held down for extreme amounts of time. It’s not that he heard or saw something that brought him back to his murder, it’s that Jason is literally being held in a constant state of panic, grief, fear, and unsafety.

By saying Jason is looking for something to be angry over and he’d find that in Bruce if he let him kill the clown, it frames the moment as a winning vs losing moment that Jason will always lose no matter what. This is a faulty understanding of how healing works and is reminiscent of Three Jokers. You can’t win at healing like Geoff Johns tries to say Barabara did and Jason failed at. Healing is something you do with ups and downs. At the end of the day, it’s a son yelling at his father to help him. It’s not about winning or losing, joker tries to make it about that (“everyone still loses”), but that frames the interaction in a much pettier light. This strips the moment of both Jason and Bruce's raw, exposed wire in water, vulnerable emotions. This looking to be angry argument is also reminiscent of the fandom's love for pit madness which strips Jason of his righteousness. Jason has very understandable reasons to be angry. His life was stripped and stolen away from him. It’s like when people say Robin Jason had anger issues which completely ignores what he was angry over! He hated rapists and pedophiles and big, authoritative tough guys who beat on women! He wasn’t angry all the time over everything; he had very real, systematic issues that upset him in overwhelming ways. Boiling him down to “he needs to be angry” wipes Jason of his motivations.

Jason doesn’t plan for a future. Really, he never even thought Bruce would kill for him in the end. When he first came back, sure, he thought Bruce would kill the joker and make Jason “the last person he ever hurt”, but in their final confrontation, Jason just asks “why on God’s earth is he still alive?” and then “I’m going to blow his deranged brains out and if you don’t like that you’ll have to kill me. Shoot me right in the face”: his ultimatum. In the confrontation, Jason doesn’t even believe he has a full claim to be upset over the Joker for just himself. He talks about Barabra being hurt by the clown and is pretty rescind to his murder in the fact that he says he was one of so many corpses filling dozens of graveyards made specifically by the Joker. Again, “last person he’d ever hurt,” Jason is fairly fine with being dead and doesn’t even think he deserves to be back, but because he wasn’t the last person the clown hurt he pushed that as his climax for why he’s angry. 

Really a better commentary focuses around “well, what does Jason think is going to happen after?” because Jason clearly doesn’t want to be alive. He sets up like four ways of suicide in his final scene. One of my mutuals a while ago posted their thoughts on what they wanted the after to be. They said they wanted to see a story where Jason killed Joker in this showdown. They believed he would probably enter this dissociated shock over the joker’s dead body, over the fact that it was just that easy, that it’s over. But, this fact would lead Jason to the realization that he doesn’t need Bruce to “save” him (i.e. protect him/keep him safe). This has literally been rotting in my head for months, you have no idea. And I truly see this as the outcome of the showdown if it had gone that way. Sure, Bruce didn’t stop him, but he also didn’t stand up to protect Jason from his murderer. Jason, just like in every other aspect of his entire life, had to protect himself. Once again, he has performed his own emotional labor, and that would probably break him away from Bruce’s chains. He got what he wanted and he didn’t need anyone else to do it for him. This interaction further shattering the heroic image he upheld Bruce to. I think that’s a much more realistic outcome based in Jason’s characterization rather than him throwing a fit over the fact the Joker’s dead therefore he has nothing else to be angry over when Jason is shown to be angry over a lot of other things as well.