I Feel Like We Dont Talk Enough About How Jason Went From Being A Child To Being Treated Like A Full

i feel like we dont talk enough about how jason went from being a child to being treated like a full grown adult when he came back

like??? the inherent trauma in dying at 15 and coming back to gotham at like 18-19 and everyone is acting like you are a full adult when he hasnt even had the chance to really experience being a teen??

theres truly not enough emphasis on how young of a character he is sometimes

i mean even going through normal teenage years its still weird when people act like you are all grown up when youre 20 so i just imagine that like 10x worse for jason

Also mostly from my civilian AU, here are sports that I can see the batfam do as non professional hobbies. Kinda scared to post this ngl, I feel like some of y'all will not share the vision, but also it's really not that deep

Barbara: Okinawa Kobudo, she's especially proficient with the bo

Dick: juggling (will do it at any given moment, no warning)

Cass: dance, obviously ballet but I could see her doing other dances too, maybe contemporary jazz and acro-stuff, I just want her to have fun and explore all the possibilities.

Jason: maybe my biggest hear me out, figure skating. He has the balance, the flexibility, the creativity and sensitivity. When I used to play the piano, there would be this form of vulnerability and emotional drifting in synch with the music, when you pour your heart into creating and in return feel transformed, which is something that never happens when I write or draw although I love those things. I can definitely see Jason going to ice skate when things are messy in his head and getting into that sort of similar headspace.

Steph: Roller Derby

Tim: skateboarding

Duke: I'm thinking parkour (I see a lot of videos of parkour in sort of indoor gyms with bars and structures that looks really fun and challenging, that's what I'm picturing)

Damian: I don't picture civilian Damian doing that many sports but if I had to choose maybe karate? Open to suggestions

Harper: paintball/ laser tag (she designed the guns. If she likes you they're just lasers).

Kate: general conditioning & athleticism + male gymnastics, because that's an almost completely different discipline and she likes that one better

Bruce: generic conditioning/weight lifting lifting, gotta pick that body in peak condition to carry his colony of children on each arm. He's also proficient in bike football from that one time he went to Germany.

Luke: kite flying (with complex, beautiful kites of he designed himself)

Chapter six of The Protector has now been split in two for tone consistency (it was super long anyway), so here's the updated chapter count.

I love this so much but also I have a bold proposal: how about instead of splitting the story at Jason's death we split it at when he first runs from the manor after overhearing Bruce and Alfred's conversation about taking back Robin? That way the first movie is entirely about Jason's time as Robin and it allows space for his characterization while also being purposefully heavy on foreshadowing as described. Probably the main Rogue would be Two Face, and there would be the scene when he chooses not to kill him/saves his life after learning he killed his dad and the Garzonas incident (i believe it shouldn't give an answer but should be put in a way that to Jason it "doesn't matter if I did, Bruce thinks I did it, but that's a complicated element and I'm not sure of anything yet). Then he leaves and finds himself back in Crime Alley, the end and it looks like he's going to live rough for a while in the next movie, get through some growth and character development and become his own hero. And then bam second movie begins with the Death in the family arc. I want that movie to get the mindset and pain so good it tricks people into thinking Jason's actions in UTRH are logical, in a "of course he did that stuff, what else was he supposed to do?" way, and I think the way to do that is to have all these elements from his death, traumatizing rebirth, catatonia and then his training and revenge. I want to never let people forget how young he was when he died and how long he is during UTRH, show how unresponsive he is in catatonia and make it clear when he heals out of it he is not his biological age. I want a death in the family to be the first arc and trigger for the story, not his rebirth because the problem isn't that he came back wrong, the problem is that he died in a way that was so wrong. I want Jason to have flashbacks but also imagery in certain scenes that reminds the viewer of Jason's trauma without him having necessarily a flashback on screen, show the omnipresence of triggers and make the viewer haunted by it the way Jason is, like the world never lets him forget that he died, and film it so that he always looks like he's in danger when he's not wearing his hood, like there's this camera work, music induced tension that something is standing behind him or about to catch him or spying on him etc., the only times he looks safe and powerful are where he's out as Red Hood. And I want, early in the movie, to watch his joy and hope finding out about Sheila, to watch him be the cutest imaginable when he sees her, goes "Mommy? Mommy!" and hugs her, I want to see him shield her body with his own and tell her he loves her. And I want the Jason who crawls out of his grave to be smaller than the angel statue looming over it.

There's a post about wanting a story about Jason's time as Robin. I made a reblog of it so long ago, but I can't stop thinking about it.

I want to watch Jason's flight as Robin, but the entire story he's haunted by the future we all know is going to come.

When he first grabs his tire iron, he has the choice of taking a crowbar instead.

Subtle purples or greens pop up when he's in danger (but not necessarily the Joker).

He frees a bird trapped inside a warehouse.

He rescues a kid who was kidnapped by their mom and returns them to their dad.

So many dead or injured birds

While helping Alfred with gardening, he breaks a nail

Gun magazines at many scenes

Motorcyclists wearing red helmets

Someone's bubbling jacuzzi has a green light on

Duffle bags

He helps hold a bandage to someone's neck until paramedics arrive

Jason reads Frankenstein while at the Manor

An ad proclaims their coffins to be the sturdiest

Just his Robin story being jammed packed with foreshadowing.

It'd also be rad to have Easter Eggs:

Someone makes a comment about assassin kids

When talking to Bruce about something, on the batscreen is a very short file about "One Who is All"

Someone at a gala mentions the Drakes' newest archeology find

Kids at Jason's school chat about meta powers and how cool controlling light is

When visiting the hospital, the nurse introduces herself as Crystal

The buildup of the audience watching Jason, who's unaware of his future, continuously face sign after sign after sign? The irrational hope that maybe someone will notice the universe basically screaming about the future? Nobody notices as more and more signs pop up. It's maddening but so intriguing.

Jason's story of Robin would follow him as he goes from being desperate to survive to thriving. His paranoia that it's too good to be true thrums in his veins, but he learns to ignore it. He's fed, loved, and flies over Gotham every night. There's conflict, sure, but he's figuring out. It's okay.

The signs start out slow and subtle. As he starts to reach towards the end, they get more and more obvious. They occur more often.

Jason doesn't know when it all goes wrong, but he's figured it out before.

We don't see him lose hope until the very end.

EDIT:

Here's the og post I was referencing

Illustration for chapter 2 of The Protector!

Featuring my inability to draw profiles and messing up the execution of Tim's design -Jason's was very fun to play with though.

Bats and Birds jobs headcanons that I will defend with my life, mostly from my civilian AU:

Barbara: works at a library, will hack your company to help you figure out flaws in the system for money on the side

Dick: retired Olympic gymnast, gymnastic teacher

Cass: part time professional wrestler, in a duo with Steph

(Edit edit: it has been pointed out to me that some people just don't like feelings which I didn't consider, so I did take off the therapy part because she wouldn't want to do it, but I still think it would be so interesting to see her volve about it)

Jason: writer (novelist + ao3, he has the range), part time barista at some point

Steph: definitely works part time at a movie theatre, I also picture her being a professional wrestler for some reason, in a duo with Cass

Tim: unclear if he's doing freelance investigation journalism or private detective work but either way he likes figuring stuff out (it's a lot of cheating husbands and he doesn't dislike it)

Duke: escape room owner and designer, the trickiest puzzles in the American continent, and each room has incredible aesthetics and personality even though people complain about how difficult they are.

Damian: professional painter, volunteers at the animal shelter every day.

Bruce: trophy wife

Harper: whatever the fuck Michael Reeves has going on

Cullen: editor (Jason's professional AND ao3 beta but neither has any idea the three identities are connected)

Lucius Fox: CEO of Wayne enterprise

Luke Fox: mechanical engineer

Kate Kane: rich heiress, competitive MMA fighter when she feels like it