so. my TKJ opinions.
Tag: meta
Can you explain the ending to #49 I’m really confused to why everyone is freaking out over it what did Tom king do that was so great. Not hating just confused
hey! i’m not entirely sure what part you’re confused about? it feels relatively straightforward to me but i can definitely give it a try!! i’ll mostly talk from a personal perspective though
the main thing here is that tom king treats joker as canonically mentally ill (his quiet question about eddie’s theory, the super sanity one that’s completely ridiculous) and gay (the panel about his preference for “crooked fellows”, the fact that no woman in joker’s life has ever been mentioned in relation to him during king’s run), that with the addition of actual nuanced human emotions leads to him being treated not exactly as A Love Interest for bruce BUT as a man who has genuinely fallen in love
and that’s huge, it’s not played off as a joke, it’s not brushed aside at all, his feelings are as real as selina’s and tom king acknowledges that (especially with his tendency to write love as the one redeeming emotion and joker’s humanity being regained through love? well, to quote joker himself, that’s everything)
now the thing is joker NEEDS batman and he thoroughly believes bruce NEEDS to be batman so his solution is to save him from what he believes to be a threat to the existence of the vigilante: happiness. the ending is joker willing to die (and, at the very least, coming close to it) for batman, he thinks he’s SAVING batman through his death and selina’s and while he doesn’t get that far, and i think he knew he wouldn’t, that’s his intention
hopefully this helps? if not, let me know if theres something in particular youre having trouble understanding!! <333
DID KING JUST INDIRECTLY CONFIRM CERTAIN THINGS ABOUT JOKER & HARV
idk if it’s just out of context but at least more people know that Joker ain’t straight and Harvey is bi..
now Tom King if you could please drop the predatory gay that’ll be swell
thanks for confirming sexualities but how about learning how to write and making a proper sentence
☝☝☝☝☝
there are, admittedly, instances of joker being written through the lenses of the predatory gay man trope but i honestly believe this literally wasn’t one of them. it’s one of those rare moments when he was treated on the same level as selina, it had all come down to the two of them & their importance/roles in batman’s life seemed to have been accepted by both, like it’s the one time joker IS actually treated as a viable love interest as much as selina (”we all loved him”; “i could give him that and he’d love me”)
Hope you don’t mind me adding to this because I agree that the predatory gay trope is not what we ended up getting from either #48 or #49, though until we don’t have #50 to see how it all actually ends it may be too early to say that we won’t
have some confused word vomit no one asked for
Look, I’m usually the first to jump on the King hate bandwagon, always; his run has rubbed me the SUPER wrong way ever since it started, even before the ship bullshit, and from the moment they announced that Joker will be disrupting the wedding I expected them to full on wallow in “dangerous deranged gay villain is gonna try to threaten heterosexual love but they will defeat him in the end cause het love wins the day,” and I was fully dying about it even after #48, which SHOCKED me in that it did treat Joker’s feelings with respect. Respect so painful and so visceral and earnest, in fact, that it brought back a ton of painful memories from when I was in Joker’s exact position (the watching someone you love get engaged and married to someone else one, not the murder people in a church one, for you FBI agents out there), and for that reason I couldn’t really approach it with anything else than intense emotion that it was difficult to untangle. Joker’s confusion, his desperation, his incoherence in the face of something that hurts him, in the face of not just a fundamental end to his way of life but also rejection, felt so acutely personal and real for me that it made me uncomfortable in a way that’s hard to describe. Especially since Bruce’s behavior (most of all, his silence, but also the way he kneels with Joker at the end there, and his one “Amen” that rings so powerful considering how little he says in the entire comic) really reminded me of TKJ in the kind of moment of connection it gave them. The comic has Bruce validating Joker, wanting to give him some sort of closure, and looking, if anything… almost apologetic. Like he’s aware of how much he’s breaking Joker’s heart, and the sacrifices inherent in his decision to marry, and maybe, just maybe, acknowledging his own complicated feelings for the man beside him and how those feelings can never be realized because of who they both are. (Yeah, that may be reaching. But I did see all that in Bruce’s gesture and expression at the end there. Sue me for wishful thinking I guess.)
And I was terrified that #49 was still gonna ruin all that by having Selina swoop in to save her man, defeat the gay menace, and her and Bruce abandoning Joker to ride off into the sunset. That, to me, is how it would have played out if they went the “predatory gay” trope without any nuance.
That’s not what happened.
Instead, from the start, we got is Joker and Selina being framed not only as equal rivals on the tug of war over Bruce, the fight between them only takes up a couple panels and the rest is just… conversation. Painfully honest, actually respectful on both sides, and still laced with hurt that the comic paints as tragic and legitimate. The comic does seem to favor Selina’s point of view in some respect, but in the end, when it takes a stand, it does seem to support Joker’s final conclusions because they ring true with Batman’s long history and the superhero genre conventions as a whole. Who knows Batman better? Who knows and understands him truly? Who would bring him true happiness? How is the wedding impacting the entire city and its mythology, not just those directly involved? This whole conversation reads like a meta examination of Batman’s entire mythos, and in this conversation, it is Joker who ultimately voices the points that seem the most relevant from a meta standpoint: Batman cannot be happy and stay Batman. So the question follows, if Batman cannot be Batman anymore, can he actually be happy? Is he the kind of man who even can settle? (And, conversely, is Selina? To me it’s a resounding no on both). It’s fitting that Joker is the one articulating this, and speaking in a language that seems to encapsulate metaphors and meta-narrative, given the kind of character he is and how he’s historically been aware of being in a narrative and of the norms that govern them all. That, alone, validates him. That, in that one moment at the end of #49, makes him right.
And we connect that to what @ufonaut already said about Joker’s feelings for Batman being acknowledged and accepted as no less legitimate and viable than Selina’s, we get something profound. Notice that Selina doesn’t refute Joker when he claims that he could have given Batman the kind of happiness she’s bringing him, too, if he wanted to. If he could. She doesn’t argue against that, and seems to agree. She understands Joker’s importance in Bruce’s life and the connection between the two men, and the root of Joker’s pain. She doesn’t rub it in his face or gloat that “ha, Batman chose ME” – well, okay, not too much, there’s still some of it there but at least not during the emotional crux of the issue. She doesn’t mock him for his feelings, or treat them as something deviant. Instead, just like Bruce in the earlier issue, she validates him by talking to him respectfully, even companionably, and some of it is definitely a front to stall and distract Joker but some of it rings genuine as well. Like maybe she wants to talk about all this, and understands that in that moment, Joker is the one she can talk to because their feelings for Bruce are of the same flavor, and just as deep.
Now, compare all that to a different comic that relied heavily on the predatory gay trope – Nu52′s “Death of the family”/”Endgame.” Both stories have pretty similar framing: Joker sees Batman distancing himself from him and picking someone else, Joker is jealous, wants to reassert himself in Batman’s life by force and violence because it’s the only way he knows how to do that. Both stories frame Joker’s actions in the language of thwarted love. In Snyder’s arcs, Joker tries to win Bruce over by attacking, hurting and kidnapping Bruce’s family, the people Joker knows Bruce loves. Violently so. He is cold and methodical in enacting his plans, he is grotesque – actually, horroresque would be a better way to put it – and he speaks in sexual and romantic innuendo as he brings his mauled ruin of a face close to Bruce in a way that is meant to evoke disgust in the reader. The comic is full of shock value, and collateral damage is something that Joker treats matter of factly, with a coldness and calculation of any serial killer. Then, even though Bruce’s behavior does also lend credence to Joker’s claims about their relationship, Bruce verbally rejects him, and then Joker comes back even darker and more vengeful than ever, intent on destroying the entire city and the two of them in it to pay for his broken heart.
I’m not condemning Nu52′s arc this way, please don’t assume that – I still love it for what it is and what it does to validate the Batman/Joker connection. But it does villify Joker to an almost unbelievable degree, and the fact that it relies so heavily on basing Joker’s actions on his romantic feelings for Batman, and how the story frames those feelings (especially DOTF, because Endgame does, in the end, give him validation) really does evoke the predatory gay trope. As many of other Joker comics do. I can acknowledge that and still appreciate them for other reasons, in my own way.
But yeah, compared to all that, King’s Joker isn’t calculated – he’s confused and hurt and acting out without much forethought. He says he set out to kill Selina, but unlike DOTF, the fight between them isn’t one-sided and geared towards torture porn, and while brutal, it’s swift and unexploitative. And while Joker’s romantic feelings are definitely validated and presented as part of his motive, that’s more in the subtext, because textually, his motives are mainly articulated to be: preserve Batman. Preserve himself and their shared narrative through Batman, with death if necessary. Which, yes, still makes him a villain of the story, even if a villain who is ultimately right – but I don’t think his gayness is used to motivate said villainy. Like it was stated above, it’s instead acknowledged as the part of him that humanizes him, that turns him into a tragic figure, that’s acceptable and understandable, even as he does violence on the main characters. And that sort of framing, to me, paints him not so much as the predatory gay trope but rather, a tragic villain who also happens to be gay and in love with the hero. And that, to me, makes all the difference.
Not sure if I was able to articulate where I see the line between the two quite well enough, but yeah, it does all depend on the framing. It may also all change when #50 drops with its conclusion, I don’t know. But after reading both #48 and #49, I am somewhat won over, and at least I can await #50 with some degree of inner peace because what we got really is so much better and more nuanced than what I fully expected we’d get.
Also, yeah I really can’t overlook how King casually invalidated edgy fanboy theories about how Batman kills J at the end of TKJ and gave credence to “the queer silence of the killing joke” in one single speech bubble. Gotta give the man kudos for that alone.
Do you think Bruce is a bad father?
Well I mean… yeah. Kinda. But also not… entirely? I mean it’s
complicated
I’d like to add onto this…
Bruce has made a lot of mistakes in parenting, but it’s clear that he loves his kids fiercely, with all his heart, consistently. And he wants so badly to be a good father to them.
That’s what matters most in being a good parent.
It’s just that most people who love their children this much, and try this hard, actually /succeed/ at being a good parent because they don’t have as many barriers to their success as Bruce has.
So I think calling Bruce a bad father is… inaccurate, because it lumps him in the same category as fathers who don’t care, fathers who abuse, fathers who ignore or belittle. That’s not fair.
Maybe it’s better to call Bruce… a “difficult” father. Like, he’s a father in all the ways that count emotionally and intentionally. But he’s “difficult” because he has a lot of issues and misunderstandings that get in his way.
And, @dracze , regarding why his relationship with Cass is so successful… I think it’s because Cass can “read” in his body language just how fiercely he cares for her.
With his other kids, verbalizing his love and concern is very difficult for Bruce, so a lot of the time they feel like he doesn’t care, or they misread his feelings, or they have this need for affection and comfort which Bruce doesn’t know how to fill. Which… that’s not their fault, that’s just one of the things that makes Bruce “difficult”, and it’s not the responsibility of the kids to put up with Bruce’s difficulties.
But with Cass, it’s a happy accident that she’s fluent in this body language thing, where she can see what Bruce really feels, and that fulfills her need for paternal affection and support.
Yup, agreed, and the “bad” adjective doesn’t really sit right with me either
Do you think Bruce is a bad father?
Well I mean… yeah. Kinda. But also not… entirely? I mean it’s
complicated
Though probably, applying real life terms, it shouldn’t be. If we’re judging Bruce’s parenting by our standards then the answer would be a “yes, he is a bad father,” no questions or qualifiers allowed. Any adult who puts children in the line of fire, who takes them out every night to fight dangerous adult criminals and basically grooms them to be child soldiers, must necessarily be judged as a bad and unfit parental figure. I do understand why many people refuse to interact with Batman content for that reason and condemn the idea of Robins entirely, because yeah, if I heard of someone in real life doing that I’d be the first to call social services.
Personally though, I tend to approach the idea of Robins and Batgirls the same way I approach Batman’s entire crusade, premise, his villains and the no-killing rule – I accept it as a fictional construct that serves a very specific function within its fictional universe, where different rules apply and where there’s narrative purpose and circumstances to those elements that justify their existence, even if only to an extent. So let’s maybe discard the sheer wrongness of the Robin idea for now and focus on the interpersonal aspect.
Which, in itself… also isn’t perfect, because it’s Bruce, and Bruce can’t people good. Unfortunately. It’s canon that he can’t really relate to the kids he adopts the way a parental figure should, and he is overbearing, uncompromising, emotionally stilted and has all sorts of issues verbalizing positive emotions – or any sort of emotions. His defense mechanism when he’s uncomfortable is to automatically withdraw and go distant and cold, and it doesn’t help that he subscribes to the mindset that in order to protect people, especially those he loves, he sometimes has to push them away. This translates to him being scant with praise and emotional support, and very tough and demanding – often to the point of being brusque – because he thinks he has to be that way if he’s to prepare these kids for the kind of life they seem to want, to arm them the way he armed himself, to protect them and make sure they can protect themselves. It’s easy to see how his own experiences would teach him that sort of tough love approach, and well, he doesn’t actually have a lot of guidance when it comes to physical affection and being a caretaker in the deeper emotional, not just heroic sense. Alfred may have tried his best, but Bruce’s personality and the distance inherent in his and Bruce’s positions mean that he probably wasn’t super open with showing Bruce physical affection, not in the same way Bruce’s parents were. He probably wasn’t sure how much of a father he could be, and how much of a butler Bruce wanted him to remain – it’s a tricky balance to be sure, and it does seem to translate to how Bruce in turn approaches dealing with the children he invites into his life. It doesn’t come easy to him to praise them, to show his appreciation, to comfort them when they need it and to even let them be children. Hell, it’s probably difficult for him just to gauge their emotional state and realize when they need comfort and gentleness because he’s just not equipped for it, by personality and upbringing both. He seems to switch between wanting to treat the children as his peers and holding them to the same standard he holds himself, and between going in the other extreme with his overprotectiveness and the need to exert full control over them because he alone seems to know what will and what won’t be safe. And I think the kids appreciate some of it, but it also creates situations where their emotional needs as children aren’t being met.
And it does do a number on the kids. Jason is probably the most famous and obvious example since his conflict with Bruce is so open, and Bruce reacts to Jason’s open aggression with the harshness and defensiveness that are his hallmark responses, only exacerbating the conflict even when he tries to fix things between them. But Dick is perhaps an even more illustrative example – it takes him years to get out of Bruce’s shadow, and it this case it means not only coming into his own from being Batman’s sidekick but also from under Bruce’s overbearing, controlling influence and Dick’s emotional reliance on him. Dick, unlike Jason, is eager to please, he’s affectionate and bright and joyful – but he also needs positive reinforcement, appreciation, praise and the kind of reciprocity of affection Bruce wasn’t really able to give him. It’s telling that he’s only able to confront Bruce over that when he’s a grown man and has been away from Gotham for a while. It’s also telling that their best moments seem to be when Dick’s a little boy hero-worshipping Batman, when just being Batman was enough to impress him and earn his love, and then when he’s an adult with his own established turf and can truly work with Bruce as an equal. The stuff between? Bruce clearly has trouble handling that.
It’s a bit different with Tim, because by the time he comes along Bruce has had a bit more experience, and Tim doesn’t start out as Bruce’s adopted son – he has his own family, which probably helps because then Bruce’s distance isn’t as much of an issue. Plus, Tim’s intellect is definitely a match for Bruce’s, so that makes it easier for them to relate and bond. And Damian – well. Damian probably wouldn’t let Bruce be overly affectionate with him if Bruce tried, which makes their father/son relationship fascinating for a whole other host of reasons cause it’s like watching two hedgehogs bouncing off one another trying to find middle ground.
I think the kid Bruce has had the most success with is Cassie, and it’s probably due to the fact that, much like Tim, she was already independent and self-reliant and didn’t need Bruce to emotionally support her. She’s also incredibly capable already, and Bruce recognizes and respects that even while feeling protective of her, and it’s fascinating to see him navigate the space between colleague and mentor when it comes to her. She’s probably the closest out of the batkids to also occupy the role “friend,” because – unlike Dick, who’s never really left the “son” slot in Bruce’s mind – she never really occupied the role of “child” to begin with.
All of this is not to say that I condemn Bruce, or that I think he’s a strictly terrible father. I do think he has moments where he’s genuinely good with the kids and happens to find the right word to say, the right moment to work himself up into a hug. And I think he tries. He tries very hard to step into a role he never expected himself occupying, and to be better at it, and to help those kids as much as he can, but it’s incredibly difficult for him for all the reasons I outlined above and it creates all sorts of issues between him and each of his kids that it takes work to move past. And that’s interesting. That’s very human, for me especially because I don’t have any maternal instincts to speak of and I relate to Bruce when it comes to his difficulties with the role of emotional caretaker for someone vulnerable who relies on him for support. In the end, all of his kids seems to love and respect him – even Jason – which proves that he hasn’t failed completely, and I think they do know that he loves them and, in his way, wants what’s best for them. It’s just the expression of that love that’s a challenge, and it shouldn’t be the kids’ role to understand and realize that but it is what it is and as a result we get some fascinating studies of all sorts of interpersonal journeys that are endlessly inspiring.
I do think that Bruce has the potential to be a good father, especially since that’s what he seems to want. Maybe he could even be a great one, in different circumstances. I love coming up with AUs and in most of the non-superhero ones I daydream about Bruce actually went through proper therapy, which allows him to be much more open and more competent and – most of all – ready when he does end up adopting his army of orphans, which he inevitably does because I love the idea of batdad and what it could be, in lighter universes. A Silver Age Batman could be a great dad. So could a few others. And that’s fun to imagine, especially in conjunction with batjokes.
But in main canon storylines, when treated seriously… yeah, it’s complicated, and that’s good. That’s good storytelling, and it’s human, and it’s what makes me appreciate the complexity of the entire Gotham landscape and the messed-up characters that inhabit it all the more.
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.
Hey I rewatched The Lego Batman movie and its still amazing. I couldn’t help but wonder what your reactions were the first time you saw it? Was it shock, pleased disbelief, joy? Bc those were mine lol~
boy oh boy I am so grateful for this ask because it gave me the impetus to revisit the absolute WONDER that is that film
I did do a few frantic posts here freshly out of the cinema but of course I suck at keeping my house in order and I wouldn’t be able to find them now
which is okay since I’m more than glad to just yell about this movie forever
like, can you imagine already being a batjokes shipper – I don’t even remember for how long but I joined the fandom for good shortly before the first “Europa” came out, so sometime in 2015 (it feels much longer than that now, wow) – and accepting that, while there’s probably always going to be SUBTEXT to the ship, DC won’t ever have the courage to follow through
and then the trailers dropped, with Joker doing the SADFACE, and all the clues as to how the plot would play out
I honestly didn’t dare get my hopes up because no way would it actually play out the way it seemed to be shaping up based on the trailers, right? It would be too good to be true, it just wasn’t possible and I should keep my expectations in check
and then I sat down in the cinema
and I left it practically crying and shaking and laughing because THEY DID THAT
AND MORE
FUCK
God whenever I remember the sheer feeling of disbelief and JOY I felt during the entire movie – not just the batjokesy bits but the whole thing, the way they approached the Batman deconstruction, Bruce characterization and how they had his trauma affect his daily life, and his QUEERNESS TOO (his very first appearance in this movie was in drag ffs) Robin, the entire idea of found family, Barbara as the new Commissioner, casually making the Gordons POC like it’s no big deal (same with Selina and Harvey!!), “GIRLBUDDY” AND J*RLEY PLATONIC FRIENDSHIP WHICH IS ALL I WANT FOR THEM, the wacky campy feeling of the whole thing, the score, even the crossover, not to mention the incredible gay hyperactive and hyperemotional perfection that was Joker himself… oh man.
Like, the ONLY thing I hated was the forced Brub*bs romance and even that went nowhere, ended in a platonic friendship and felt like an obligatory and tacked-on no homo to appease the bigots when the main thrust of the plot was undeniably (canonically romantic!) batjokes with Joker very clearly slotted not only as the love interest with the most genuinely romantic moment of validation I’d seen in a long time, but also as the one who was RIGHT
that is just
the narrative posited Joker’s argument as the CORRECT one and included him in the group of people Bruce hurt (the framing! I will never get over the framing here) and should make amends with, and then they went ahead and included him in the final credits AS PART OF THE BATFAMILY
like, not only did the batjokes basically save the day by reconciling and holding hands and professing their love hate for one another, the movie went ahead and hammered it home by including Joker in the bat family circle in the credits and I fucking CRY, MY DUDES, I CRY
I am so glad I didn’t see it for the first time alone – I went with my friends, who were probably super embarrassed because I kept making excited noises and grabbing their hands and going “oh my god oh my god oh my god???” through most of it, especially by the end, when I realized where the rift in the finale was headed
by the time they showed Batman not being able to reach over the chasm alone and Joker’s feet stepping into frame I was just “HOLY SHIT THEY’RE DOING THIS!!!!!” and I could have fainted for joy
Tbh I was going to save this ask for a thorough, detailed, long-ass meta about the movie, something like “Lego Batman: Really That Good,” and I still might, but for now I decided that actually tipsy screaming is the order of the evening because I need this feeling of happiness in me once again and because most of everything currently going on in the franchise depresses me to no end
Lego Batman is my happy place and I still can’t believe it’s a movie that actually got made, that exists, and that I get to watch it with my own two eyeballs whenever I need it (and I need it a lot)
Thank you for the ask, Nonnie, it made me so happy, almost as much as the movie itself
Honestly, I think Dc should make a really good Batman. I say, REALLY, and not just a moral about „If we do what they do, we will be worse than them” Even if their goal is to help people? For me this Batman mentality is what makes it ridiculous. The cover is enough. Not that I hate Batman, I see a lot more potential than just being a guy who saves more bad guys than the victims. It’s just an egotistical whim to have a connection with each of them. Ask part 1. I’ll send the rest. no space for Word
continued comment (Yes, I believe Batman has a connection to the villains.) For example, I think he has more courage to kill his own allies. His fanfics are very descriptive, I find his Batman very cool. But I can not swallow what he chose (Joker, a very toxic relationship) to his family and maybe a reasonable mental health. Maybe he’s the crazy one in the end. He and Harley would be great bar friends, talked about their passion for J.
siiiiiiiigh okay so normally I don’t really respond to those kinds of asks and just ignore them, and I have to question the logic of sending something like this to a Batman fan who ships batjokes but okay
So your point is that you don’t like that Batman is morally ambiguous? That you think that he shouldn’t be morally complicated? Which, okay that’s fine, you do you, I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there who also enjoy a less grey Batman and create fanworks in this vein for you to enjoy. I’ve seen plenty of that kind of stuff around tumblr, there’s a huge variety of headcanons and takes to choose from.
But like… you do realize that he’s been written like this ever since the character’s creation in 1939, right? Hell, ye olde Golden Age Batman used guns and had no trouble with killing. The rules against that, which have become so integral to the character as we know him, only came later on. There has never actually been a version of Batman who wouldn’t in some way be morally complicated, and even the purest one out there – Adam West from the ‘66 show – still had a connection to his villains, and saw the potential for redemption in criminals which, judging by the ask, is not something you approve of.
I mean, I personally like Batman precisely because of that connection to his villains, and because he is morally complicated. A big part of the character’s appeal is the fact that he has the potential for darkness and yet he chooses to do what, in his mind, is the right thing, then actively makes that choice time and time again even if it doesn’t come easily to him. That’s a conflict I find interesting in a fictional character, especially when the protagonist is sympathetic to his villains, who are for the most part fantastic characters in their own right, who are entertaining, in many ways sympathetic and who represent a spectrum of mental illness, queerness, poverty and other sorts of Otherness and disenfranchisement. That the hero of the story tries to understand them, often chooses to side with them and attempts to help them as much as he can, over blindly and unquestionably enforcing the status quo, is what made me go from “Batman is boring” to “Batman might just be my favorite superhero of all time.”
And yup, this goes for his relationship with Joker as well. Because – and again, I’m going with canonical evidence on this – this connection is the one that’s most often emphasized, and with good reason.
So yeah, I disagree with basically everything you’ve said here and personally I’m glad that Batman is a morally complicated and often “””problematic”””” character. I’m glad that canon reinforces, time and time again, that he has more darkness in him than he’d like to admit, that he has mental health issues (just like his villains do, imagine that) and that he’s flawed, fallible and prone to emotional judgment calls that don’t always bring the best results and that can, in fact, alienate his allies whether he means for that to happen or not (and sometimes he actually does). Hell, I like it so much that I’ve already written
237,793 words of monsterfic examining just how this fallibility might play out in relation to Joker in a very specific setting.
But hey, to each their own. If you don’t like that about Batman, then like I said, you don’t have to look very far here on tumblr to find tamer, more vanilla, less villain-oriented content with Batman you might enjoy more. DC alone – to say nothing of Marvel – has plenty of other content that might be more up your alley altogether, like Superman, Wonder Woman or even Nightwing and Batgirl comics if you wanna stay within the Bat brand. I’d recommend checking those out if you haven’t already.
Cheers.
(PS – I do, however, agree that it would be very cool if Bruce and Harley became friends.)
If the Joker was a woman, what effect do you think that would have on the characters dress and queerness? Like, the Joker wear dresses and is feminine now, so would a female Joker whoacts about the same be as fun? I know I at least really like it when the Joker is so flamboyantly girly. Would female Joker just be really butch?? On another note: thoughts on the Joker speaking French?
Hey! I did address how I’d imagine fem!J presenting in that same post, under the readmore, and now there’s a great addition that kind of expands on both of them a little
but yeah basically, in order to go for a similar effect that male Joker has with his feminine-coded attributes and general deliberate stereotypically queer presentation, fem!J would have to go the opposite way. The aim in both cases is to appear almost androgynous, to complicate assumptions about their gender and sexuality as both a statement of who they are and what they represent and to simply unsettle people as much as possible, so for female Joker, that would entail taking the butch route. I still imagine her as super skinny, tall and pointy, not very curvy at all, which definitely helps with the overall effect, and she’d dress in a way to emphasize that, without sacrificing her signature colors though.
As for the French thing, it’s canon that J does speak it – hell, he actually has an entire cult in Paris, thank you “Europa,” and even aside from that he often sprinkles his dialogue with French phrases in comics, and I love it. This tendency ties with him liking to present himself as a “sophisticated performance artist”, a “better class of criminal” standing above the dirty mooks he has to deal with out of neccessity, and can be yet another way to establish himself as Batman’s intellectual equal, in a “hey look how educated I am” way.
(that and it’s another part of Joker’s queer-coding to me because having a male character speak French this way has been used this way historically)
What do you think the Joker would do if he saw Bruce crying, desolate, broken and no longer wanting to play (maybe after Alfred or Jason’s death)? Would he laugh or ..?
Well, that would really depend on which Joker we’re talking about and the circumstances that pushed Bruce to this state
Talking about general comics Joker, I could see it playing out in three ways: either he gets angry at Bruce for wasting so much attention on the “supporting cast,” or he does laugh, mocking Bruce for having feelings for people who don’t matter (shadow puppets as he likes to call them) and deluding himself he’s one of them and that “ordinary” lives have meaning
(and even as he does, I think he would still appreciate it simply because this belief is part of what makes Batman so precious and special)
or I could see J trying to use Batman’s tragedy to his advantage and convince Batman to go off the rails, manipulate him, push him even further.
Actually, it’s easy to imagine all 3 occurring at the same time.
I don’t think he would be able to offer comfort, as such, even if he wanted to (and I do believe some versions of J might want to) – he’s just not equipped for that. He wouldn’t know how to approach such a situation with tenderness or subtlety, or not for long, not sincerely, because he can only relate to the feeling if he imagines how he’d react if it was Batman himself who died. Otherwise, the grief is completely alien to him. So the mockery, the manipulation, might very well be his idea of comfort because that’s the sort of coping mechanism he uses – maybe it will work for Batman too? The mockery could be meant to offer Batman perspective, distance him from the immediacy of the pain, while the manipulation, or just stoking Batman’s anger, could be the means for giving Batman the tools for revenge. All of this could very well be Joker’s idea of supporting Batman through this, making sure his “darling” remains strong and doesn’t break. It also would serve the purpose of redirecting Batman’s grief into anger that’s focused – on Joker himself. He’d be consciously making himself into a target so Batman can express some of the grief on him, through physical violence, which the situation would inevitably escalate into if Joker tries anything like this.
And the terrible thing is, I think once the haze lifts and Bruce is able to evaluate the situation, he would be forced to admit that Joker’s tactics might have worked, if only short-term.
Because at the end of the day he’s a violent person too, and they’re both emotionally stunted manchildren who don’t know how to Feelings.
Dracze's Rambles 