#A is already making plans to get some good fucking mental healthcare for B and is texting all the others out for B's head

[burningsoprettily]

Character A, through gritted teeth, while trying their best to stab the other: Why can't you just fucking die already!?

Character B, smiling while ducking under A's sword: Trust me, I've tried. It doesn't work.

A, freezing in their place, stricken: Wha– No. No. You don't– B–

B, a tired immortal: Hm? It's fine. It's all in the past. Don't worry about it.

#Imagine prompts #Otp imagines #Imagine your otp #AU: Immortality #Enemies to friends #Protective antagonist #Villain x hero #Merthur #Cherik #Superbat #Remember that doctor who quote? All that pain and it just made you kind #Malec #Geraskier #Obi-wan kenobi #Tw: self-harm #Tw: past self-harm #Tw: attempted suicide #B says don't worry about it and A revises all their past interactions and sees the self-destructive behaviour #And oops B looks like you have a new motherhen! #A is already making plans to get some good fucking mental healthcare for B and is texting all the others out for B's head #Coz ofc the villains all have a chat group #So basically 'Kill B Painfully' group becomes 'Protect B At All Costs' #A is the chairman of the protection squad ofc

[dajokahhh]

Alright, time for some pretentious sociological-esque rambling. This is gonna be long as hell (its 1822 words to be specific) and I don’t begrudge anyone for not having the patience to read my over-thought perspectives on a murder clown. CWs for: child abuse, 

I think a lot of things have to go wrong in someone’s life for them to decide to become a clown themed supervillain. A lot of people in Gotham have issues but they don’t become the Joker. I think that as a writer it’s an interesting topic to explore, and this is especially true for roleplaying where a character might be in different scenarios or universes. This isn’t some peer reviewed or researched essay, it’s more my own personal beliefs and perspectives as they affect my writing. I think villains, generally, reflect societal understandings or fears about the world around us. This is obviously going to mean villains shift a lot over time and the perspective of the writer. In my case, I’m a queer, fat, mentally ill (cluster B personality disorder specifically) woman-thing who holds some pretty socialist ideas and political perspectives. My educational background is in history and legal studies. This definitely impacts how I write this character, how I see crime and violence, and how my particular villains reflect my understandings of the society I live in. I want to get this stuff out of the way now so that my particular take on what a potential origin story of a version of the Joker could be makes more sense.

Additionally, these backstory factors I want to discuss aren’t meant to excuse someone’s behaviour, especially not the fucking Joker’s of all people. It’s merely meant to explain how a person (because as far as we know that’s all he is) could get to that point in a way that doesn’t blame only one factor or chalk it up to “this is just an evil person.” I don’t find that particularly compelling as a writer or an audience member, so I write villains differently. I also don’t find it to be particularly true in real life either. If you like that style of writing or see the Joker or other fictional villains in this way, that’s fine. I’m not here to convince anyone they’re wrong, especially not when it comes to people’s perspectives on the nature of evil or anything that lofty. Nobody has to agree with me, or even like my headcanons; they’re just here to express the very specific position I’m writing from. 

The first thing I wanna do is set up some terms. These aren’t academic or anything, but I want to use specific and consistent phrasing for this post. When it comes to the factors that screw up someone’s life significantly (and in some instances push people towards crime), I’ll split them into micro and macro factors. Micro factors are interpersonal and personal issues, so things like personality traits, personal beliefs, mental health, family history, where and how someone is raised, and individual relationships with the people around them. Macro factors are sociological and deal with systems of oppression, cultural or social trends/norms, political and legal restrictions and/or discrimination, etc. These two groups of factors interact, sometimes in a fashion that is causative and sometimes not, but they aren’t entirely separate and the line between what is a micro vs macro issue isn’t always fixed or clear.

We’ll start in and work out. For this character, the micro factors are what determine the specifics of his actions, demeanor, and aesthetic. I think the main reason he’s the Joker and not just some guy with a whole lot of issues is his world view combined with his personality. He has a very pessimistic worldview, one that is steeped in a very toxic form of individualism, cynicism, and misanthropy. His life experience tells him the world is a cold place where everyone is on their own. To him the world is not a moral place. He doesn’t think people in general have much value. He learned at a young age that his life had no value to others, and he has internalized that view and extrapolated it to the world at large; if his life didn’t matter and doesn’t matter, why would anyone else’s? This worldview, in the case of my specific Joker, comes from a childhood rife with abandonment, abuse, and marginalization. While I will say he is definitively queer (in terms fo gender expression and non conformity, and sexuality), I’m not terribly interested in giving specific diagnoses of any mental health issues. Those will be discussed more broadly and in terms of specific symptoms with relation to how they affect the Joker’s internal experience, and externalized behaviours.

His childhood was, to say the least, pretty fucked up. The details I do have for him are that he was surrendered at birth because his parents, for some reason, did not want to care for him or could not care for him; which it was, he isn’t sure. He grew up effectively orphaned, and ended up in the foster care system. He wasn’t very “adoptable”; he had behavioural issues, mostly violent behaviours towards authority figures and other children. He never exactly grew out of these either, and the older he got the harder it was to actually be adopted. His legal name was Baby Boy Doe for a number of years, but the name he would identify the most with is Jack. Eventually he took on the surname of one of his more stable foster families, becoming Jack Napier as far as the government was concerned. By the time he had that stability in his mid to late teens, however, most of the damage had already been done. In his younger years he was passed between foster families and government agencies, always a ward of the government, something that would follow him to his time in Arkham and Gotham’s city jails. Some of his foster families were decent, others were just okay, but some were physically and psychologically abusive. This abuse is part of what defines his worldview and causes him to see the world as inherently hostile and unjust. It also became one of the things that taught him that violence is how you solve problems, particularly when emotions run high. 

This was definitely a problem at school too; moving around a lot meant going to a lot of different schools. Always being the new student made him a target, and being poor, exhibiting increasingly apparent signs of some sort of mental illness or disorder, and being typically suspected as queer (even moreso as he got into high school) typically did more harm than good for him. He never got to stay anywhere long enough to form deep relationships, and even in the places where he did have more time to do that he often ended up isolated from his peers. He was often bullied, sometimes just verbally but often physically which got worse as he got older and was more easily read as queer. This is part of why he’s so good at combat and used to taking hits; he’s been doing it since he was a kid, and got a hell of a lot of practice at school. He would tend to group up with other kids like him, other outcasts or social rejects, which in some ways meant being around some pretty negative influences in terms of peers. A lot of his acquaintances were fine, but some were more... rebellious and ended up introducing Jack to things like drinking, smoking cigarettes, using recreational drugs, and most important to his backstory, to petty crimes like theft and vandalism, sometimes even physical fights. This is another micro factor in that maybe if he had different friends, or a different school experience individually, he might have avoided getting involved in criminal activities annd may have been able to avoid taking up the mantle of The Joker.

Then there’s how his adult life has reinforced these experiences and beliefs. Being institutionalized, dealing with police and jails, and losing what little support he had as a minor and foster child just reinforced his worldview and told him that being The Joker was the right thing to do, that he was correct in his actions and perspectives. Becoming The Joker was his birthday present to himself at age 18, how he ushered himself into adulthood, and I plan to make a post about that on its own. But the fact that he decided to determine this part of his identity so young means that this has defined how he sees himself as an adult. It’s one of the last micro factors (when in life he adopted this identity) that have gotten him so entrenched in his typical behaviours and self image.

As for macro factors, a lot of them have to do specifically with the failing of Gotham’s institutions. Someone like Bruce Wayne, for example, was also orphaned and also deals with trauma; the difference for the Joker is that he had no safety net to catch him when he fell (or rather, was dropped). Someone like Wayne could fall into the cushioning of wealth and the care of someone like Alfred, whereas the Joker (metaphorically) hit the pavement hard and alone. Someone like the Joker should never have become the Joker in the first place because the systems in place in Gotham should have seen every red flag and done something to intervene; this just didn’t happen for him, and not out of coincidence but because Gotham seems like a pretty corrupt place with a lot of systemic issues. Critically underfunded social services (healthcare, welfare, children & family services) that result in a lack of resources for the people who need them and critically underfunded schools that can’t offer extra curricular activities or solid educations that allow kids to stay occupied and develop life skills are probably the most directly influential macro factors that shaped Jack into someone who could resent people and the society around him so much that he’d lose all regard for it to the point of exacting violence against others. There’s also the reality of living in a violent culture, and in violent neighbourhoods exacerbated by poverty, poor policing or overpolicing, and being raised as a boy and then a young man with certain gendered expectations about violence but especially ideas/narratives that minimalize or excuse male violence (especially when it comes to bullying or violent peer-to-peer behaviour under the guise of ‘boys will be boys’). 

Beyond that, there’s the same basic prejudices and societal forces that affect so many people: classism, homphobia/queerphobia, (toxic) masculinity/masculine expectations, and ableism (specifically in regards to people who are mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent) stand out as the primary factors. I’m touching on these broadly because if I were to talk about them all, they would probably need their own posts just to illustrate how they affect this character. But they definitely exist in Gotham if it’s anything like the real world, and I think it’s fair to extrapolate that these kinds of these exist in Gotham and would impact someone like The Joker with the background I’ve given him.

I have no idea how to end this so if you got this far, thank you for reading!

#clown in command ; ooc #i've got a million of 'em ; headcanon

[fantastic-nonsense]

@sanctusapparatus: I've seen people say Kamala was a more progressive candidate than Bernie or Warren, on the virtue that she's black. I've seen people say that voting for a member of [INSERT GROUP HERE] is the right thing to do, regardless of what positions they actual hold. Sorry for jumping to conclusions, but this wouldn't have been the first time I've seen someone say identity>policy when picking your candidate. 

Also, I mean, Warren seems to basically be Obama 2.0: Make a lot of vaguely progressive promises that you back away from at varying speeds approaching and after the election while working really hard to keep the neoliberal exploitation train on track. She basically dropped m4a the moment it posed any kind of difficulty, and I can't imagine anything else she's promised will fare better. She's basically the definition of a make-no-waves establishment appeasing centrist

1) I never said identity>policy. I said I was upset that we had the most diverse slate of Dem primary candidates ever and it looks like we’re going to end up with two 80-year-old white men yelling at each other. That says nothing about their policies or who I actually agreed with. It was a statement based on the fact that I’m tired of pretending like EITHER Biden OR Bernie is the best person to carry the flag of the Democratic Party forward when they’re fucking 80 years old and could die at any time (looking at you Bernie) or end up with a serious mental health decline (Biden). Like...both of you retire. Go home. There are better people suited on both the moderate and the liberal side of the Dems to take on Trump than either of you. That was the point of the post.

2) You’re dead wrong about Warren, which you would realize if you actually researched what she’s achieved and done for Americans. Like, this characterization of Warren as a centrist is laughable. Warren had the national platform for talking about progressive issues before Bernie was a genuine player in the general public consciousness.

I really wish people would stop erasing history here. People forget that Warren was the Darling of the Left in the pre-Trump era (and frankly, in many respects she still is). Bernie was just another senator making good speeches at the time. The Run Warren Run campaign wasn't a thing for nothing, you know, and there were literally op-eds written to console Warren fans when that effort failed. People have wanted Warren to run for a lot longer than they have wanted Bernie to run. In many ways, Bernie is following in the footsteps of Liz, not the other way around. I know a lot of people are too young or didn’t read the news before Trump, but like....do your research before saying nonsense like this.

Don’t believe me? Fine...maybe believe some pre-2015 news articles?

Roosevelt Institute, September 2011: "How Elizabeth Warren Put Bankruptcy on the Progressive Map"

New York Magazine, November 2011: "A Saint With Sharp Elbows: Elizabeth Warren"

The New York Times, November 2011: "Heaven is a Place Called Elizabeth Warren"

The Washington Post, September 2012: "Elizabeth Warren, Populist Leader"

The Daily Beast, December 2013: "What Obama Can Learn from Elizabeth Warren"

Mother Jones, April 2014: "Elizabeth Warren: Democratic Kingmaker?"

NYBooks, May 2014: "Elizabeth Warren's Movement"

The Nation, September 2014: "Meet the 'Elizabeth Warren wing' of the Democratic Party"

The New Yorker, November 2014: "Elizabeth Warren Wins the Midterms"

Politico, November 2014: "Reid Taps Warren as Envoy to Liberals"

The Progressive, December 2014: "Young Women Love Elizabeth Warren"

The Guardian, March 2015: "Progressives ponder 2016 fallback plan: Elizabeth Warren for vice-president"

Vox, May 2015: "Why Hillary Clinton Needs Elizabeth Warren"

Time, July 2015: "How Elizabeth Warren's Populist Fury is Remaking Democratic Politics"

On M4A, she didn’t backtrack on Medicare for All “the second it got tough.” Instead, she literally sat down and worked out a plan for how to get there and how to pay for it. She provided a workable and viable solution to get us there within four years, the exact same timeframe as Bernie's bill. I'm so tired of people saying she backtracked on universal healthcare just because she came out with a plan to actually get it done and pay for it.

Just because she has a different path to getting to a universal healthcare system than Bernie does not mean that she 'shifted her stance' nor does it make her "not serious" about getting there. It's called a policy disagreement; it happens all the time. Just because someone has a different idea about how to get to the same end goal does not mean that they shifted their stance on the actual end goal. To put it in crude terms: taking a bus, taking the train, and driving your car are all valid means of transportation. It doesn't make any of them inherently worse options. They are simply different ways of achieving the same goal: getting you from Point A to Point B. Wanting to get to "Point B" has not changed, nor the timeframe you wish to arrive there; only how you get there.

Ultimately, healthcare legislation is passed by Congress, not the President. Bernie has to get a majority of House Reps and Senators on board with his plan for it to pass, which they have shown no real desire to do (multiple Dem senators have already stated they will not vote for Bernie’s M4A bill and are not campaigning on universal healthcare; if we can’t get Dems on board, we’re sure as hell not going to be able to get Republicans on board). Warren's transition plan is infinitely easier to pass, is actually popular in the court of public opinion, deals with many of the major pitfalls of an immediate transition, and helps ease the fears of moderates (whose votes you will need to enact anything of significance) that we can do this, we can create a universal healthcare system, without significant economic damage. She has not been wishy-washy nor has she backtracked; she has come out with her own policy proposal that is workable, fully fundable, and able to be passed while sticking to her guns that she wants to achieve universal healthcare. And that's far more than I can say for Bernie.

So no: I'm not going to let people forget that Elizabeth Warren was the face of the Populist Left nearly a decade before Bernie Sanders gained national attention. I'm not going to pretend that the modern progressive revival started with Bernie Sanders. Please acknowledge her contributions to the revival of the Progressive Movement in American politics, because without her and her popularity Bernie would never have been a viable candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2016. She is not a centrist and never has been; she just knows how to play nice with centrists to get the progressive agenda passed (which...again, is something Bernie does not seem to understand how to do).

#personal #elizabeth warren #bernie sanders #2020 election