application } deerington.

[bamboozlement]

IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Jason Peter Todd, aka the Red Hood
Canon: DC Comics (Rebirth)
Canon Point: End of Red Hood and the Outlaws #25

In-Game Tattoo Placement: A fairly simple design, starting at his sternum and branching up over his collar bones and wrapping up the sides of his neck – sort of like this, but reaches up higher.

Current Health/Status: Alive but badly injured – Jason endured a severe beating from Batman before passing out that busted his ribs, bruised his face, dislocated his right arm, required stitches, and almost certainly gave him a concussion.

Age: early 20s
Species: Human

Content Warnings: Jason comes with A TON of content warnings for violence, blood, murder, and death, his mother's historical drug use and depression, and childhood domestic abuse, because his father is a real fucking piece of work. In addition, he has some lingering unresolved feelings about being brought back from death, and while he’s not actively suicidal, some of his words and actions seem to indicate that he would be fine with no longer being alive. Based on his behaviors, he likely suffers from major depression and PTSD, if not CPTSD, so mentions of symptoms from undiagnosed, untreated mental illness may also occasionally crop up.

History: 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 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. Batman happens to be on that same rooftop and proceeds with round two of beating Jason to a bloody pulp, though it’s cut short by the arrival of Roy Harper, who incapacitates Batman with a shock-and-smoke arrow and rescues Jason from further damage.

Personality: Jason Todd has not had an easy life, and the troubles and traumas he has experienced since day one have had significant influence in shaping his personality. Born to a low-level criminal-for-hire/drug dealer and an addict, Jason grew up in Crime Alley, one of the poorest, most crime-ridden areas in all of Gotham City. His father, Willis, was often absent, either doing crime or doing time for said crime; when he was home, he was verbally and physically abusive to both Jason and his mother. Catherine was more neglectful than actively abusive, absent in her own way, by checking out of reality and into the influence of drugs, often to the point of catatonia. Jason was thus left to basically raise himself, without any stable, nurturing parental influences, and found himself orphaned and homeless by the time he was a teenager. Under those influencing factors, it’s perhaps no surprise that he turned out to be a violent vigilante with a rigid, flawed sense of morality.

There’s no question about the levels of fearlessness Jason possesses - only someone with nerves made of solid iron would dare steal from Batman, a masked vigilante crime-fighter who has built his reputation on being the scariest bastard in town. Starting with his tenure as Batman’s junior partner Robin, Jason is shown running head first into danger, performing death-defying leaps from buildings at great heights, even charging unflinchingly at thugs firing bullets straight at him. It’s not recklessness, per se; his movements are both intentional and calculated (and, OK, a little bit reckless). This tendency only intensifies when he takes on the moniker of the Red Hood; he goes toe-to-toe with Batman without even blinking, dives off rooftops without certainty as to where exactly he’ll land, and races around skyscrapers like they’re an obstacle course. He is a brave person, not afraid to take risks to his physical safety.

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. His line between people and scum is very clearly defined, and leaves very little room for exception: those who fall into the former category are decent and deserve to be helped; those in the latter deserve to be taken out like the trash they clearly are.

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. This is the biggest area in which Jason clashes with Batman - he believes that Batman’s non-lethal methods of dealing with crime aren’t effective, and that his own approach of permanently removing from the equation the criminals who are responsible for serious crimes that severely harm others is the only way to be an effective agent of change. He recognizes that this stance is contrary to what society views as acceptable and that he is thus also a criminal, but he believes that he is justified in committing these murders, as it is the lesser of two evils. He doesn’t believe that murdering criminals is good or right, per se, but that it’s necessary.

Jason clearly 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 can be considered a walking example of that “‘I don’t care,’ I say, caringly, as I care deeply” meme. Even so, mincing words is not Jason’s style; he is as much a verbal bulldozer as he is a physical one, saying exactly what he means and doing exactly what he wants, regardless - or perhaps in spite of - the consequences.

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 as Batman’s partner Robin, his personal insecurities about being good enough, 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 lands him in sticky situations.

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.

Although Jason is entirely capable of strategizing, he often acts impulsively instead, with his heart instead of 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. Despite knowing what the consequences would be of shooting Penguin - revenge for setting up his father as the fall guy in a crime that would land him in prison for life - Jason followed through with it anyway, and earned a brutal beatdown from Batman for his decision.

At his core, Jason has a good heart, though it has been broken many times over. His intentions of helping the oppressed and underprivileged citizens of Gotham by eliminating crime are good, but his execution is extremely flawed. He often makes poor life choices and is quite possibly his own worst enemy, but he still holds vast potential to make great things happen.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: 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 (katanas more than great/long/broadswords), 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 and magical beings. 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, and although he never finished high school, Jason claims he’d done enough work under Batman’s tutelage to earn multiple doctorates in criminology. Jason is quick-thinking under pressure, resourceful, and a skilled strategist, when he puts his mind to it; 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. He’s also been trained by Batman in escapology and stealth, and learned how to steal and con from his father.

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.

As most of Jason’s skills are entirely human and acquired through study and training, they should not need to be warped. The exception is the All-Blades, which are magical items powered by Jason’s soul. He doesn’t use these often, as they only work against magic, but if warping is necessary, I’d suggest that it take the form of their summoning and usage being unreliable.

Inventory: 1) the All-Blades (set of two), for his allowed weapon; 2) one of his replacement Red Hood helmets; 3) a duffel bag with 4) a basic first aid kit and 5) a set of street clothes (pants, shirt, hoodie, socks, underwear); 6) his phone (generic smartphone, just for the pictures of his pals).

Writing Samples: one (memory share and aftermath discussions); two (questioning the network about in-game events); two and a half? (sizing up a newbie in person).

OUT OF CHARACTER

Player Name: Rae
Player Age: 38
Player Contact: gothmoth and/or gothmoth#3738 @ the Disco(rd)
Other Characters In Game: N/A

In-Game Tag If Accepted: Jason Todd: Rae

Permissions for Character: Here!

Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Yep! DC canon tends to do this anyway - Jason’s even done it himself once or twice.

What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: Basically all of them - horror is by far my favorite genre of film and literature. Spooky stuff is just super interesting! And it’s a good insight into what makes people/characters tick when they’re forced to confront the things that scare them.

Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Eye gore and animal torture/death, please.

Additional Information: Nah.