Hey I’m really sorry for being noisy but are you planning on posting the new chapter soon by any chance? I can’t wait to read it, it’s literally the best fanfiction I have read in my life!! I mean it

THANK YOU and I mean, I WANT to

It’s not like I don’t, it’s just

I think that my frustrations with the fandom burnt me out on it for a bit there, and added too much negativity to my anxiety-riddled brain so that even when I found the time and brainspace to try and work on the new chapter it took me way too long to shake off that negativity and try to relocate the space where writing the story was fun. I lost sight of that for a bit, and then the break got longer and longer, and I just can’t seem to manage to find a way to write regularly with my work schedule (maybe that will improve once I manage to get on normal hours though I don’t know when that will be) and my distance from the fandom made it even harder to relocate that purpose and awareness of why I was even writing it in the first place, and what I wanted to say with it, or maybe that what I wanted to say was important to me. 

The good news is that I think I’ve hit a new turn in my mental attitude towards the fandom? At least I hope so, and that it will last. I’ve been working on a new oneshot that hopefully drops next week that helped me a lot to get back in the proper headspace, and hopefully that will translate to more HWA energy. 

It does help to be reminded that some people are still eager to read an update even after all this time. So thanks <333

The new chapter currently sits at around 9k words, just to prove that I’ve been doing something with it

Hey look! Exciting news!!!

Okay. So I have made a mental playlist for your hwa and some of the songs on it are so embarrassing, I’m not even going to bother listing them. But one, I was rereading your last chapter and I just had to say: „That’s All” by Genesis really sums up to me, Bruce’s headspace throughout this romantic journey. …Please tell me I’m not crazy and that you can kinda see it too

Oh shit thank you so much for this. It’s super hard for me to find songs that fit Bruce’s state of mind, so this was an experience. Great catch friend, thanks!

Hey so I just read batman: white knight and I mean I know it’s been out forever but I wanted to ask if you’d read it and what your thoughts were. I mean you’ve written this beautiful recovery fic and white knight deals with those themes and I wondered what your thoughts were. I mean is recovered „jack” really still even joker in these „complete recovery” cases? Like do you feel it takes something away from his character? I think I might feel that way. Actual recovery is not so immediate…

Okay, first of all thank you for the kind words about my fic <333 I’m glad you’ve enjoyed Joker’s therapy process in HWA (though I’m not sure I’d personally call HWA a recovery fic).

As for WK, I only read the first 2 issues of it and then ragequit, which honestly should tell you enough about how I feel about this comic

WK negativity and general grumbling under the jump

To be honest, I’m not sure that WK wants to deal with recovery and mental illness as such in any serious way. The first two isses certainly didn’t. As you mentioned, we have those uh… miracle pills that seem to do the trick immediately, and maybe that’s some sort of relevant plot device? Maybe there’s a trick to them that’s revealed and given significance later on? Honestly I don’t care, because from what I’ve seen in just those two issues, Murhpy doesn’t seem to possess the sensitivity or insight to treat this theme with any real nuance. I don’t trust the guy who, in the same comic, implied that Joker (a white man) inspired “Black Lives Matter”, portrayed the Waynes as Nazi collaborators, insinuated that Joker didn’t even realize that he fucked two different women who both went as Harley, used the classic Harley as his mouthpiece to slut-shame SSQ-style Harley for the way she dressed in the name of feminism, portrayed Batman as a violent sociopath with no regard for collateral damage in a manner so de-contextualized and simplistic it reeked of reddity “Batman is actually the bad guy, I saw the Nolan movies so I know everything!!” dudebro hot takes, and – to me, worst of all – implied that Joker’s homosexual love for Batman was intrinsically tied to his mental illness and “evil” and had to be cured with straight love and a marriage to Harley when he went “good.” 

That’s… not so great. 

Considering all of that, I don’t know, nor do I care, how Murphy deals with the issue of mental illness later on. I just don’t trust him to handle it with any sort of sensitivity looking at how he handled everything else. To me, WK is an insulting garbage fire and it BAFFLES me that it’s been popular, enough so to apparently warrant a second volume. Sure, the art is great. But even those two first issues were terrible enough that I decided to blacklist everything to do with the thing and cut myself off from it completely, and everything I’ve seen and heard of it since then only cemented my opinion. 

Coming back to the gist of your question, yeah, recovery is not immediate. It doesn’t work through miracle pills, and it wouldn’t for Joker. And I do agree that rehabilitation stories for Joker are always inherently sad for me, because yes, in his case “recovery” means sacrifice of the greatest order: sacrifice of self, or at least his idea of what his self is. It absolutely takes away what makes him him, at least to some degree, and it’s inevitable even in fluff pieces. Reading such fics, before I started writing HWA, always left me unbearably sad for that very reason. That’s why I don’t really think of HWA as a recovery fic, as such – maybe an attempt at recovery, but my aim, in the end, is more of a deconstruction of that trope. I’ve struggled a lot with this idea when writing, and I still do: I love Joker the way he is, and I can’t help but feel a sense of loss when considering what a rehabilitation taken seriously would necessarily take away from him. So in the end I decided to take that feeling of sadness and based the entire story around it to examine how it would play out in a situation where Joker made the choice to try. Many readers commented, rightly so, that this resulted in an imbalance between him and Bruce that almost feels unpalatable, which I absolutely agree with. Bruce gets to keep his sense of self, with some sacrifices, sure, but not of the same magnitude, while Joker basically has to sacrifice everything for the promise of a relationship that’s uncertain, shaky and in itself requires lots and lots of work. Is that a fair deal? Can it last in those circumstances, when one part is expected to give up so much while the other essentially remains as they were? Should it last? And should an attempt at recovery even be made in such cases, when we’re dealing with characters who are essentially archetypes? 

I think those are all questions that should arise when we discuss this topic, and they’re not easy or pleasant to consider. Maybe that’s why it’s taking me fucking forever to finish this goddamn monster – and to be clear, I’m not saying that my take is the only one worth considering, just that it’s more or less how I personally see the issue and I felt the need to present it in story form mostly so I could grapple with it for my own sake. 

I’m not sure Murhpy considered any of those questions at all, but maybe he did. Maybe he included more on it later on in the issues I didn’t read. I might check it out at some point, if curiosity gets the better of my anger over his treatment of most everything else. For now, though, I’m rather happy not knowing and staying well away from it, playing around in how I imagine this sort of scenario playing out in my own fantasy world, since it’s clear Murphy’s vision of those characters, their world and their thematic significance, or at least the way he presents his understanding thereof, doesn’t really jive with my own.

Thank you for the question though, I did appreciate the chance to unload some of my issues with the book and to articulate my own approach to a small degree, even if it probably makes me sound like a conceited jerk.   

i just want you to know I’m really close to starting an actual fund to pay you for your work on „half way across” because the fic is just that phenomenal, and i would 100% buy it. i reread it so many times and think about it alot and its stuck with me more than most mainstream books or even media in general, and.. u honestly deserve payment for that as thanks

!!!!!!!!!! WELL YOU KNOW

I would not say no to that

it would be quite

nice

quite nice indeed

but honestly I’m really grateful for the message and the sentiment and the kind words, it means so much to hear that especially now in my (continued) creative rut, you have no idea 

a ton of hugs for you my friend

If Terry were in HAA’s universe would he still be Bruce’s son (in the future)? since Amanda was responsible for her birth.why they needed a new Batman.

Honestly? I don’t know, I haven’t thought forward that far 

I don’t really like “Batman Beyond” very much (even though I would die for bitter old hermit Bruce)

their ties wouldn’t be biological, that’s for sure, but there could be other ways to introduce Terry into the story, especially given Bruce’s adoption problem

but yeah the main appeal of such a scenario for me is imagining old batjokes being all retired and domestic together. Just. Ahhhhh. 

mellie-art:

”Don’t turn the flashlight out on me, Bats,”

– Half Way Across

🎉🎉🎉🎉HAPPY BIRTHDAY @dracze hope you have a great day 🎉🎉🎉🎉