(re)application | the sphere.

[bamboozlement]

Player information.
• Name: Rae
• Age: thirtysomething.
• Contact: gothmoth#3738 @ the Disco(rd)
• Other characters: n/a.

Character information.
• Character name: Jason Peter Todd, aka the Red Hood
• Canon: DC Comics (Rebirth)
• Canon point: Just post-Red Hood and the Outlaws #25 + Sphere CRAU
• Age: early 20s

• Canon background: Here’s Wikipedia and DC wiki. Neither of those links goes too far in depth with Rebirth’s events, so here’s a summary:

Jason spends the first 23 issues of the series building his life up: working (with Batman’s tentative blessing, i.e. non-lethally) to infiltrate and dismantle Gotham’s underground; making a cautious peace with the Batfamily; building a family of his own in the new team of Outlaws with Bizarro, a faulty Superman clone, and Artemis, an imperfect Amazon. Then, in typical Jason Todd fashion, he takes all of the progress he’s made, tosses it in the dumpster, pours gasoline on it, and sets it on fire.

Faye Gunn has six letters delivered to Jason by her granddaughter – letters that his father, Willis, wrote to him while in prison. In those letters, he crafts a portrait for Jason of a father who loved him and took jobs as henchman-for-hire for the good of their family but had the bad luck of being set up as a fall guy by Penguin. Jason’s emotions are rubbed raw enough by reading these letters that he digs up his father’s grave (empty, to no one’s surprise) while protesting loudly that he doesn’t care, then confronts Penguin at the opening of a new waterfront amusement park, and in an extremely public spectacle, shoots him point-blank in the face.

Although Jason manages to evade GCPD, Batman has been watching the unfolding events on live TV broadcast and proceeds to hunt Jason down and attempt to pummel him into submission so he can bring him in to face justice. Jason is rescued mid-beating by Bizarro and taken to the floating – soon to be crashing – ship that has served as the Outlaws’ base of operations. In a desperate bid to prevent the ship from crashing into Gotham City and killing thousands, Bizarro rips up some of the ship’s inner mechanisms and pulls them through the quantum doorway, to pull the ship through itself into another dimension (look, comics are a mistake). Before the door closes, Artemis decides to go after Bizarro, kisses Jason good-bye with a mysterious, vague apology, and hurls Jason out of the ship. He lands on a rooftop below and watches, distraught, as the ship explodes and disappears into an unknown dimension. Like a proverbial bad penny, Batman turns up again for round two of beating Jason senseless, but just before passing out, Jason is rescued from further injury and incarceration by Roy Harper, former Outlaw as well as Jason’s formerly estranged best friend.

Sphere CRAU: Jason spent six months in the underwater domes, attempting to recover from the emotional blows that were dealt to him the last time he was in Gotham, making some progress toward that end, and being set back once again every time one of his painful memories is broadcast for the rest of his captive neighbors to see. He started to become close with a few of those neighbors - among them are Beverly Marsh, a young girl he silently adopted as a little sister and trained in new methods of fighting, and Wanda Maximoff, a woman he doesn’t know well but is the first person he’s met who truly understands the kinds of loss he has experienced.

(I’d like Jason to return to the domes with no memory of being missing for the last few months, if that’s OK!)

• Abilities: 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, by masters such as Batman, members of the League of Assassins like Lady Shiva, and the ancient group of mystic warriors known as the All-Caste. He is also a skilled marksman with firearms and proficient in wielding a number of other weapons, such as swords, knives, throwing stars, and explosives, and he is able to summon the All-Blades, a pair of short swords powered by his soul that only work against magic.

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, and although he never finished high school, Jason claims he’d done enough work under Batman’s tutelage to earn doctorates in criminology. Jason is quick-thinking under pressure, resourceful, and a skilled strategist; he’s smarter than most people – himself included – give him credit for. He’s also been trained by Batman in escapology and stealth, and learned how to steal and con from his father.

• Strengths:
Compassionate: One might think that a brutally violent criminal/antihero with a large kill count like Jason would lack compassion entirely, but it’s actually one of his greatest strengths, although he’s selective in how he extends it to others. Even before he became Robin, Jason displayed a desire to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves, like his drug-addicted mother, and once he became a vigilante, he also became a champion of the disadvantaged, such as women and children, as well as victims of crimes like sexual assault. As the Red Hood, he mercilessly targets and eliminates criminals who prey upon those who are unable to defend themselves, seeking to help those who have been in a similar disadvantaged position as himself.

Determined: Jason possesses an ironclad will and a resourceful attitude, and once he sets his mind to a task, there’s very little that will stop him from achieving it. This die-hard work ethic means he gets the job – any job – done, and he gets results, though it’s sometimes questionable as to whether those results or the any-means-necessary path he takes to achieve them are right.

Passionate: Jason has strong feelings about a lot of things; he’s a person who, in general, feels pretty intensely. That intensity is what drives him to action, what keeps him going when others in his position might give up, what fuels the decisions he makes and the beliefs he holds, even though he often hides his true feelings under a shell of dry sarcasm and snarky bantering. Jason is a particularly striking example of the “’I don’t care,’ I say, caringly, as I care deeply” meme.

• Weaknesses:
Emotionally volatile: The flip side of having intense, unchecked feelings is that Jason’s emotions are extremely volatile. He is frequently angry, and never developed good coping skills for dealing with his rage at the world and his place in it, his parental abandonment, his death and subsequent replacement, and the continued, compounded injustices he sees. He’s like a walking raw nerve, and he (mis)manages his anger by lashing out with brutal violence. Jason’s emotional volatility also often makes him and his (re)actions to emotional distress difficult to predict, which makes him a dangerous opponent and sometimes places him in unpleasant situations.

Stubborn: Where Jason’s determination is a strength, it turns into a weakness in the form of stubbornness. Jason can be extremely bull-headed when he’s got an idea in his mind, accepting no compromise, such as his stance that repeat criminal offenders should be killed rather than left to slip through loopholes in the criminal justice system. Time and again, he’s butted heads with Batman over such issues, and neither of them is willing to back down, which is one of the roots of their contentious relationship. He also uses any methods necessary to achieve his goals, even illegal and arguably immoral ones, and fails to consider the costs of his actions, especially for himself.

Impulsive: Although Jason is entirely capable of strategizing, he often acts impulsively instead, with his heart rather than his head, especially when it comes to anything concerning his family, either birth or adopted. For example, he was killed as a teenager after taking the Joker’s bait and following his mother, who he believed dead, right into the trap set for him, and despite knowing what the consequences would be of shooting Penguin as revenge for setting up his father, Jason followed through with it anyway.

• Nightmares: Death and failure are gonna be Jason’s top two. His own brutally violent death is something his mind - both conscious and unconscious - revisits fairly often, and the deaths of people Jason loves features in canon nightmares, usually related to Jason’s failure to protect them.

• Network sample: A recent shared memory + discussion.

• Prose sample: Mingling with Loki + Meeting Wanda in a bar.