freakedelic:

earlgraytay:

downwithpeople:

downwithpeople:

my hot-tip for every writer of any skill-level is ‘don’t make your villain the joker’

an antagonist who doesn’t have any stakes, who doesn’t have any redeeming qualities, who doesn’t have any limitations and who doesn’t have any motivation besides committing evil acts is an inherently boring character. they do not, in fact, say a lot about society.

…I don’t think a character like that is inherently boring, but they really do have to be shaped around their protagonist in a way that takes more work than making them just Their Own Character. 

And that’s especially true in superhero fic. Since cape comics have been going on so long, most of them have built up a symbolic language by now.

Modern Batman, when he’s written halfway decently, is a story about trauma and recovery. A scared little boy loses both his parents to a senseless crime, vows that no one else should ever have to go through that again, and sets out to make sure of just that. Once he grows up, he adopts children of his own- symbolically regaining the family he lost.

He’s a flawed person, and in some ways outright broken- PTSD does that to you! But he’s trying to do the right thing, to protect the people he cares about.

…and in this reading, the Joker is symbolically the chaos, fear, and constant threat that comes along with PTSD, especially PTSD caused by some kind of systemic problem, and with living in a world that you know is profoundly broken. The Joker’s entire thing about how anyone can snap if they have just one bad day? The way he’s constantly trying to get under everyone’s skin, especially Batman’s- to trigger people? The absurd glee he takes in causing absolute out-of-control mayhem? Yeah.

The Joker doesn’t “say a lot about society”. But he does, in fact, say quite a lot about Batman as a character- what the guy wants, what the guy’s afraid of. He’s a narrative foil for Batman; his character makes very little sense on its own, but with the context of Bruce’s inner demons, it takes on a new meaning.

….I think the reason that people try to make the Joker say something deep about Society ™ is that there is another reading of Batman’s character that is very popular, thanks to writers whose politics are…. enh…. which IMO is an oversimplification of the above; Batman is the Strong Man who protects ordinary people so they can sleep at night, fascistic af Order in the face of Chaos. If you read Batman as a brilliant perfect super-entity- instead of a profoundly broken person trying to heal- the Joker stands in for ~scary~ things like “anarchy” and “terrorism” that can be solved by a good old-fashioned fascist drubbing.

And that… is a paradigm that’s interesting to subvert, and that’s where you get stuff like Joker (2019). Because in a world that runs on fascist rules… all of us queers and commies and freaks and weirdoes on Tumgle.hell …  we are the Joker.

I think to say that the Joker is inherently boring is to ignore the eighty ish years of history where he he has been enjoyed and appreciated by lots of fans and writers. The Joker is a popular character - clearly, just because OP finds him boring, doesn’t mean that everyone else does. Joker’s captured the imagination of people for more than half a century, which is more than most other villains stick around. To assume there’s nothing to that is pretty narrow minded, I think.

And like mal says, it has a lot to do with symbolism and how Joker is cast as the villain in a Chaos vs Order fight or to batman’s specific psyche. Also, the assumption that Joker has no other traits or motivations kind of goes against most of the comic books in his recent interpretations. I’d add that he’s been heavily queer-coded for more or less the past thirty years, too. There’s more to Joker than The Dark Knight trilogy, lol.

It’s interesting to contrast the Joker as “anarchy” as in disorder with, well, Anarky as anarchy as in anarchism, who seems relevant today and Batman seems to fundamentally respect because “an intelligent, driven kid using a costume and gadgets to bring about his desired social order” is something he recognizes