I Just Know Crocodile Brought On Mihawk Because He Thought He Would Be Sensible, Calm And Collected,

I just know Crocodile brought on Mihawk because he thought he would be sensible, calm and collected, low maintenance. He thought it was going to be them against the idiocy that is buggy. And it is to a degree.

What he failed to calculate is that Mihawk is just as bad as buggy.

Worse even because at least Buggy can be bullied into doing paperwork. I just know everyday Crocodile is astonished by the absolute commitment Mihawk has to his aesthetic. Walks into his tent just to find that he has somehow converted this circus ass tent into a mid century gothic castle. Somehow carpeted the whole thing end to end is burning more that a 100 candles for “mood lighting”, has a fully open fire pit and a sewing machine in the corner.

Like Crocodiles essentially a mafioso he can appreciate the wanting nice things. Still won’t prepare him for the day Mihawk’s brings him a wine budget, a tailoring budget and an embroidery budget all painstakingly itemized.

Won’t prepare him for having to replace every single wine glass because buggy drank out of one and he can’t break up a set but refuses to use a cup that buggy’s put his mouth on.

He’s starting to think that the real reason the Warlords were disbanded was because they simply could not afford to pay for Mihawk’s upkeep anymore and decided they’d rather pay in cadet lives than see one more wine budget.

He is essentially being held hostage, in his own guild, by the whims of a bored middle aged vampire, and a fucking clown.

“I have larger thoughts about how DC has kind of written themselves into a hole with Jason and now he's stuck in this limbo that's unsatisfying to everyone which is why so many Jason fans are mad all the time, but that's for another ask.”

🤓 Do tell…

Okay, let's see if I can do this in less than a thousand words!

So Jason, at his core, represents a challenge to Bruce's ideology, right? Bruce's #1 rule is No Killing, and Jason's basic idea is: "That doesn't work. Some villains are bad enough that they have to be killed for the greater good." (There's something very funny about Jason, famously undead, thinking killing stops ANYONE in the DCU, but we'll leave that aside for now.) This is a really interesting ethical quandary to throw Bruce's way, and by having it voiced by his beloved son, his greatest failure, his second most profound tragedy, it becomes a deeply thorny emotional problem as well as an ethical problem. That's all great.

The problem is, DC can't allow Jason to be right, for two reasons:

Batman must always be right and must always win.

...I mean, come on. They can't actually publish a story advocating for a traumatized 19-year-old with assault weapons to be the arbiter of who lives and who dies, that's nonsense. I love Jason but really.

The problem with that is, Jason is a major recurring character.

UTRH works great in a vacuum. But if Jason is showing up in a comic every month, or even just a few times a year, this central conflict has to be addressed, and the options for doing that are limited:

Bruce and Jason fight and Jason wins. DC will never let this happen. (And what would "Jason wins" even look like, honestly? He's not going to kill Bruce.)

Bruce and Jason fight and Bruce wins. They've done this a bunch (sometimes with Dick in place of Bruce), but Jason fans don't want to see him repeatedly getting his ass kicked while being lectured, and frankly it doesn't make Bruce look great either.

Bruce allows Jason to kill people. This can't happen either; it would be wildly out of character for Bruce, not to mention literally everyone in the Batfamily. They are all canonically pretty opposed to murder.

Jason continues to operate however he wants, but outside of Bruce's reach/jurisdiction. As wretched as RHATO was, I actually think it was a smart decision to keep most of the action outside of Gotham, because then we can pretend Bruce doesn't know what Jason's up to, just like we pretend Clark couldn't super-hear everything in Gotham and save Bruce's ass every single night without breaking a sweat. The problem here is that it means Jason is unavailable for the kinds of casual team-ups and crossovers that fans of all stripes crave - plus, every time he comes back to Gotham, he and Bruce have to relitigate their entire relationship AGAIN.

Jason compromises and agrees to follow Bruce's rules in order to have a relationship with the Batfamily. This is basically where DC has landed, and I understand why they did, because it's the option that allows them to publish the most comics with Jason in them, which they want to do because he is an immensely popular character who makes them money. However, it leaves him in this awkward position where instead of being a tragic villain/badass antihero, he's just...the sassiest member of the family, while simultaneously always being available to be treated like shit because he's Bad. He gets punished without even the fun of doing the crime anymore.

So what's the solution? I don't know. Theoretically, DC could try to do what Marvel does with the Punisher. People always get mad when I say Jason is DC's Punisher, but he kills pretty much indiscriminately in UTRH and RHATO, for pretty much the same reasons. ("Dudebros think it looks cool.") And Marvel heroes inexplicably let Frank just kill however many people he wants unless they're appearing in a Punisher comic, at which point they go "Frank, you naughty boy, I shall stop you!" and then Frank kicks their ass and makes them look like an idiot. DC is never going to let Jason do that to Bruce, plus it would put a real damper on the Wayne family Thanksgiving dinner.

Alternately, they could make him a Nightwing villain. Dick has spent 40 years fighting inconclusively with Deathstroke; he's much better suited to go endless rounds with Jason without either of them Always Triumphantly Winning than Bruce is. I don't personally want this option because I just don't care that much about Dick, but it could be really interesting, though it would limit Jason to fewer appearances and primarily in Dick's book. (Jason would have made a superb Red Robin villain 15 years ago for similar reasons.)

My vote, I think, would be for a really good (god, if only), really thoughtful Jason series where he has reason to seriously reevaluate his philosophy towards crime - something that reshapes him into a character who can still challenge Bruce's entrenched ideas without being so diametrically opposed to them as to make him a villain. He needs to be close enough to Bruce's rules to appear in crossovers, but far enough and specific enough that he's not just Meaner Nightwing. Jason is a passionate character; DC needs to find a new way to let his passion work for him, because right now he doesn't have anything driving him, and it's satisfying no one.

(900 words, BOOM!)

Mihawk the type of dude to try food because he heard it's pair well with a bottle of wine he already had.

This is why he doesn't like hotpot it doesn't go with red wine.

Because why did mugibaras on twitter say that Mihawk doesn’t like hotpot because it is a communal meal and it just clicked for me. Because yeah he would fucking do that.

He is such a fucking weirdo. He is taking protecting my peace to literally like be so for real right now.

do you ever become obsessed with a character and you just go "of fucking course its that one" at yourself because you are so incredibly predictable