jason todd } the red hood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scathefires) wrote2018-07-30 06:48 pm
scathefires) wrote2018-07-30 06:48 pm
character info @ sixth iteration.
Name: Jason Peter Todd, aka the Red Hood. He may also give "John Doe" as his name, if he's feeling like being a complete shit.
Canon: DC Comics, broadly; specifically, the Batman: Under the Red Hood animated film.
Scrubs Color: Teal.
Visible Age:
Gender: He's a dude.
Height/Physique: 6 feet tall, about 200 lbs of solid muscle, and built like a linebacker from a hell dimension.
Hygiene: ... Average?
Hair: Dark and in a permanent state of disaster.
Eyes: Somewhere between blue and green.
Defining Marks: Nothing visible, but if you happen to catch him with his shirt off, there will be a fair number of old battle scars.
Accent/Speech: The dulcet tones of Jensen Ackles.
Bearing/Demeanor: Jason is, in a word, wary of others. He’s not exactly paranoid, but he doesn’t trust easily, either - he has been burned by some pretty significant people in his life (most notably Bruce Wayne, his surrogate father figure and mentor) and it has left him with some deep pain that he is currently Not Dealing With. He projects a certain base level of affability, mostly through dry wit and sarcasm, and he knows how to carry an amicable conversation, but he'll only let people in so far, and he’s a lot like a feral cat - his mood can shift on a moment’s notice. Jason also does not respond well to authority types, and he will have a sassy comeback for just about anything anyone says to him.
Habits: Violence counts as a habit, right?
Skills: Despite being a DC Comics character, Jason doesn’t possess any superpowers, per se, though he does have quite a few entirely human talents. He has an impressive physical presence, having been trained - and trained well - in hand-to-hand combat, martial arts, and acrobatics; he is also a skilled marksman and proficient in wielding a number of other weapons, such as knives, throwing stars, and explosives. In other words, in a physical fight, Jason’s able to physically handle himself and take care of others, if necessary.
Jason may not possess a genius-level intellect, but he’s no dummy - he’s been trained in the investigative arts by none other than the world’s (well - this world’s) greatest detective, Bruce Wayne, aka the goddamn Batman. Jason is also quick-thinking under pressure, resourceful, and a skilled strategist, as evidenced by the masterful manipulation he sets into play in order to get to the Joker via Black Mask, the only person in Gotham with the resources and connections to break him out of Arkham. He’s smarter than most people – himself included – give him credit for, and he can certainly use his brains in combination with or instead of his brawn to survive and thrive under pressure.
Jason’s survival skills in general are quite strong, displayed in how he lived on the streets of Crime Alley as a homeless child and took care of himself by ripping off car parts to sell before that fateful meeting with Batman. One of his less-obvious survival skills is a sense of intuition - being able to read people and guess at their intentions and how to proceed in any interaction. It’s not perfect by any means, but it does give Jason a sense of who can be trusted and to what extent, and it’s an important learned skill to have when placed in a high-pressure situation with other people.
HISTORY.
Jason … was not a very good Robin, let’s be real. He was headstrong, had trouble following Batman’s direction, tended toward brutal displays of violence, and believed his use of excessive force was more than justified. As one example of what were surely many occasions, Jason and Bruce are shown arguing post-dustup in which Bruce chastises Jason for his use of excessive force and Jason justifies his life choices by saying the criminal whose collarbone he shattered was scum and thus deserved it.
Despite Jason’s problems, Batman kept working with him, and as a teen, Jason accompanied Batman on a mission to Sarajevo, Bosnia, where notorious criminal and Batman’s archnemesis the Joker had been employed to run interference for international terrorist Ra’s al Ghul, in effect serving as an elaborate distraction to get the Caped Crusaders off his trail while he attempted to disrupt the economic order of Europe. During the fight, Jason was separated from Batman, captured by the Joker, brutally beaten almost to death with a crowbar, and locked inside a warehouse, where he then had a chance to get up close and personal with a roomful of detonating explosives. As you might imagine, Jason died as a result of this exposure.
However! Jason got better … sort of. In a gesture of remorse for Jason’s death, which, according to Ra’s, was “not by design,” he swapped Jason’s body with a replica before it was taken back to Gotham and immersed him in the restorative waters of the Lazarus Pit, a mystical fountain of youth which Ra’s had personally used numerous times to extend his own lifespan over the course of the past six centuries. It had been rumored to even restore the dead back to life, which was what Ra’s hoped to accomplish with Jason, in effect “rectifying” the damage he’d done. That operation went about as well as you’d expect: Jason came back to life, freaked the hell out, and ran off without so much as a “thanks for all the fish.” Ra’s was unable to locate him again and presumed Jason dead … again.
Five years later, Jason returned to Gotham, having taken up a new identity - the Red Hood, a former alias of none other than the Joker. What Jason did during those five years is anybody’s guess, since it’s never elaborated on in the film, though it’s reasonable to assume he spent that time learning various new and exciting ways to kill people and plotting his elaborate revenge. Operating as the Red Hood, he encroached on the territory and resources of Black Mask, the first criminal to unite Gotham under one banner in 20 years. Jason set himself up as a rival crime lord, bullying Black Mask’s people into enlisting with him, stealing arms shipments, and blowing up Black Mask’s headquarters. After several failed attempts at making the Red Hood nothing more than a red stain, Black Mask resorted to breaking the Joker out of Arkham Asylum to tackle the task that so many before him have failed to achieve, because employing the Joker always turns out well for all involved.
Black Mask’s plan backfired, surprising no one (except Black Mask, apparently), when the Joker turned on him instead, staging a city-wide barbecue with Black Mask and a number of his people, current and former, as the main dish. The Joker intended to lure the Red Hood out into the open, which is exactly what happened; however, Jason revealed that “an audience” with the Joker was his true objective in going after Black Mask, who was the only person in Gotham with the resources and connections to bust the Joker out of Arkham.
Jason captured the Joker and used him to lure Batman to Crime Alley, where, in an emotionally-charged showdown, he demanded to know why Batman refuses to end the Joker’s reign of terror once and for all - in other words, why Jason’s murder wasn’t enough to make Batman bend that silly little moral qualm he has about killing, just this once. Jason then tossed Batman a gun and told him if he wanted to stop him from killing the Joker, he would to have to shoot Jason instead – right in his face. The other acceptable outcome in the choices Jason listed was if Batman shot and killed the Joker himself.
Batman, of course, did his Batman thing and found a way around killing either of them; he threw a batarang at Jason’s pistol, causing it to explode. Disarmed, with the Joker momentarily free and at Batman’s throat, Jason produced a switch for the explosives he’d rigged in advance of this little reunion and set off the timer. The Joker cackled like a madman, as a Joker does, attempted to prevent Batman from disarming the explosives, and at the last possible second, Batman grabbed Jason and pulled him out of the direct path of the blast. The building exploded, but Jason’s body was not found in the rubble, and he was presumed to have escaped. The Joker was shipped back to Arkham, and life in Gotham returned to normal again.
@ entranceway.
- Jason also spoke with Tim Drake over the network, but did not know him (Tim isn’t included in the film at all), and since they both gave fake names, Tim didn’t recognize Jason at first, either (Tim’s canon point was from before Jason’s return to Gotham, so they hadn’t met). He pieced together who “John Doe” was from the clues Damian provided, though, and approached Jason, which did not go well. To Jason’s credit, he managed to restrain himself to only threatening to break Tim’s face on his fist, rather than actually attacking the boy, as his comics counterpart did in canon. Jason later looked after Tim when they were both aged down in an event and afterwards, decided to treat Tim as a potential ally instead of a bitter rival.
- Two other important connections were made that first day, one of which was Jonathan Kent, a young, compassionate Superboy who became Jason’s friend by tapping into his dormant sense of empathy – Jason is especially protective of children, and the horrors of Wonderland are something he believed Jonathan shouldn’t be forced into coping with alone. The other was Cissie King-Jones, an ex-masked vigilante who’d worked with Tim Drake and knew of Jason, but never personally met him before their time in Wonderland. She became Jason’s friend simply by being nice to him without reservation, with no strings attached, and supported him when as a result of in-game events, he was reverted back to his 16-year-old, freshly resurrected self, and has just as hard a time coping with it as he did the first time. She was later instrumental in Jason’s decision to view Tim not as a rival but a potential ally and friend.
- Perhaps the most important connection Jason made in Wonderland was with another version of himself, a Jason Todd who wasn’t murdered when captured but rather tortured for a prolonged period of time by the Joker and went on the become the Arkham Knight instead of the Red Hood. Through comparison of their lives, Jason was forced to accept that what happened to him was not the worst possible outcome.