**slips and slides into the room with socks on and breaks the wooden table as i fall down on the floor in a haste** so anyways i actually just scared myself because i thought of exactly how deep Malorn's and Malistaire's parallels went. like in post-updated tutorial malistaire was said to have been kind and caring towards his students right. just like malorn right. just like malorn, right? isn't that just like malorn? hey everyone doesn't that sound just like malorn? kind and cares for his students? 'kind' and 'caring' are certainly two adjectives that describe malorn arent they huh? (is slowly sinking in quicksand as i desperately reach out to you as i say this) so if we are to say that malorn and malistaire are two sides of the same coin then what is truly stopping malorn from having one traumatic event from shaping the rest of his life into a descent of madness, grief, and isolation? Guys tell me what the difference is between this reality and an Evil Malorn AU guys? guys hello? hello guys? **(the quicksand has actually transported me to the Backrooms now, no one can hear me call out in distress)**
Sleeping in käärijä's bed made me philosophice (prob not a word xD) about inspiring others and being an inspiration for the little guy in your life which is leagues better than how I normally sleep in new places.
I was however pulled down to earrh again when I slipped out of the bed when my alarm went off 🤣
Post-canon Akeshu reunion where dental hygienist Goro Akechi walks into the patient’s room and sees Akira Kurusu in the chair. Cue poorly explaining why he stayed away while cleaning Akira’s mouth until Akira just bites his fingers. It’s okay, he can show off his pearly white smile to his previously presumed dead rival turned hopefully boyfriend, which is a lovely smile by the way! Hey Crow, you missed out on this cute lil grin for AGES. This is great, but you’re still getting bitten—
Akechi: Your gums wouldn’t be bleeding so much if you flossed more.
Akira: Oh, I bet. Maybe my cognitive self wouldn’t have bled so much when you shot me if I had flossed more back then, too!
Akechi: Listen here, you little shit.
Akira: Alright, whatever. Swapped out the leather gloves for latex?
Akechi: Standard sanitary procedure, Joker.
Akira, fishing a certain glove out of his pocket: Wanna try this one on for old time’s sake?
Akechi: …You still carry it with you?
Akira: I carry your glove, the weight of your loss, and all this dental plaque. :D
is that - well, even canonically, he’s not actually “insane.” in the most canonical version of his backstory (bc there are many conflicting incarnations, but this one is the touchstone for a lot of later canon), he was part of a street gang before falling into a vat of Nondescript Toxic Waste that damaged his melanin production and That’s It. he supposedly “lost his mind” after seeing his reflection, which is absurd on many levels. no. he’s not “insane.” what he is, is an angry white boy.
the thing about the joker is that he exults in his own uncontainability. He laughs, because all of gotham - all the world - is built to be his playground. the only lunatic thing about him is the lunacy of ~Society~, to borrow from the joker’s own playbook; the lunacy of the joker lies in the world that grants him power: in the inheritance of loss: in white privilege, and what it means for everyone else.
“to prove a point.” those were the joker’s exact words, when he shot and paralyzed Barbara Gordon. she asked why: he laughed. “to prove a point.”
because that’s all he ever does. he hurts people because he can. and because all the power in the world can’t save him from getting hurt - and isn’t that just peachy?
because the thing about the joker is that he can get hurt. he has been hurt. but he has so much more capacity to harm than to be harmed. he is immortal. he and he alone will never have to face the consequences of the hurt that he inflicts on other people.
so then: why not hurt them? misery loves company, after all.
the joker is the embodiment and end result of our own social system: the madness of the exception: the laughter of the white man: the imprecation to smile, as he kills you.
(no one ever says it, i find, but it’s still true: barbara deserves to kill him.)
and who, then, is the batman? if the joker is the yin to his yang? if they’re two sides of one irredeemable coin, if they represent the “balance” of an unjustifiable system - who is he if not another white man?
because he is. Bruce Wayne is a white boy born into unspeakable privilege and forced to endure suffering anyway; who copes with his suffering by taking it out on others; who copes with his suffering, not by taking advantage of the world as it is, but by attempting to reshape it. to make it in his own image - as if it isn’t already his, as if claiming it further will crush out the pain.
the batman is the benevolent oppressor to the joker’s malevolent one. he changes nothing, in the end. two privileged white boys with their own respective navel-gazing grudges - where, after all, lies the difference between benevolence and malevolence?
because they are not “chaos” and “order.” not really. They are laissez-faire laughter and law. Joker exults in the disease of the system, Batman seeks to treat its symptoms, but neither of them will ever change anything about the root cause. because they may have suffered the faults of this system, but they still benefit so much more from it as it exists. Uphold it or break it, neither of them wants to change the law.
but the law is only as good as the people it’s made to protect. and who does that law protect, really?
waylon jones is, in one issue, explicitly depicted as Black. between that and his skin disorder, there has never once been room for his character to be any more than a monster: king croc is, always, a character to be violated and brutalized, over and over and over and still - always - written as the villain. (he tried so hard to scrape out a place for himself, so many times, in so many incarnations, and each and every time he finds himself relegated once more to the sewers. he will never be anyone’s king. there is no place under the sun for people like him.)
victor fries only ever wanted to save his wife, and a capitalist mogul decided a few extra numbers on his eight-digit paycheck were more important than the people whose lives depended on that money. fries’ body was damaged to disability by that choice, left without the resources to find a cure for his wife, and he robbed banks because there was no other option available to him. we seem to have forgotten, or maybe never really understood, why that matters. why a desperate man trying to save his life and that of his loved ones under the crushing gears of capitalism is a villain, and the one who stops him is our hero. why, under the law batman upholds, a bank vault and a CEO’s hoard is worth more than a life.
poison ivy just wants to live, too. wants a life not defined by the devastation of her body, of the beings that exist as extensions of her, a life where green and growing things are not commodities to be plowed up and poisoned and destroyed for the sake of another man’s profit. these are villains; they are written as such. these are their motives.
who does batman fight for, really? who is our hero, this emblem of our law?
is he our hero? ours, the broken and bleeding members of the world he claims to protect?
who does the law protect, except him - him, and the joker?
no matter what happens at the second gig today (käärijä / no käärijä) i need everyone to know seeing videos of Kris singing ngvot was my personal tavastia experience already
Considering I had pretty much no plan when I started and freestyled my way through, it does look ok! But I've learned a lot and there's plenty of things I'll change for the next one to make it better.
"I am not ducking, I'm setting a scene! At my core, I am ugly. I do ugly things. I am a parasite. But I am a parasite with ideals." Coyote huffed, "What is some assassination for the greater good? What is a few shot messengers? It has to get uglier before it gets prettier."
Coyote blew a puff of air at Rainer and leaned back against the balcony rail. How to say it all coherently? "Gerontocracy and tradition. That is the world I was put in. You're expected to die at the whims of your elders and change their diapers while you're at it. By their rules, I'm not even supposed to live alone yet, much less own property."
"I do it so they know that I don't need their permission to eat. And neither does anybody else they spawned to scrub their floors. If that means killing more local leaders. . ." They shrugged.
I'm filling the queue and working on some stuff but I'm gonna have to start just breaking the 'try not to repeat characters in queue' because of how monstrous Julian is. I'm sill going to try when I can but I'm not going to be too fussy about it from now on.
Consider this a NON-JULIAN starter call. If you don't specify muse you will get the OCs or someone else from a different verse! You can still like This Starter Call if you want Julian content.
"So what are you in here for? Did they classify you as criminally insane and a danger to others as well?"
The Joker truly hated that place and everyone who worked there.
Not only had they taken away his knives and his custom made clothes but also confiscated his greasepaint. Despite being heavily sedated with Thorazine he managed to memorize the faces and nametags of the two big orderlies who made that big mistake that would be soon turn out to be fatal for them.
He had been there for two months already, maybe more. Time seemed to stop in that rathole The doctors were having time of their lives running multiple tests on him, he'd lost count how many times they'd put him on a polygraph machine. Some doctors would prescribe him ECT treatment, some would insist on increasing the dosage of his daily pill cocktail, and some would even suggest hypnosis. It had been entertaining at first: watching each doctor's reaction, seeing them panic and get uncomfortable around him. The doctors, despite their different level of competence, professionalism and experience, had yet one thing in common: they all failed at diagnosing him.
Last couple of weeks he'd been playing the perfect patient on his best behavior, so he was allowed to eat at the Arkham's cafeteria, among other inmates. He was used to how quiet the whole place became once he entered and everyone would suddenly find the contents of their plates very interesting.
There was a table near the barred window that no one would dare sit at because everyone knew that was his place. His eyebrows rose with curiosity as he saw one of the chairs being occupied. He hadn't seen her before. She must be new here. He decided he liked the woman's fiery red hair and big blue eyes. He sat across her, straddling his chair, dark-circled eyes shifting to meet hers.
"Guess then we have a lot in common, huh?" The Joker began in his low conspiratorial drawl. "I'm here for performin' an act of uh, Batsorcism on Gotham." His gaze darkened as he nodded slightly a few times. "So...," he flicked his tongue to lick his dry bottom lip, terribly terribly missing the red paint, "what's your story, Red?"
Meet Rachel. Ethan's older sister. Out of all of his family she is the only one who can count herself close to him. And that's not saying much. He's done a bang up job of keeping all his blood relatives at a distance because he despises the entire Harrison clan. Save for Rachel. Who has genuinely tried to be a good sister to him - always able to identify when he is more off than usual. And he'll never admit it, but he's actually let her in a little and given her a glimpse into what he does - although she hasn't caught on to any of his dropped hints.
Meet Jeannie. Joker's wife and mother of his one and only child. Sadly both are deceased. She was with him before he became the man he is today, struggling with him through thick and thin - more thin than anything until her death. Her memory is one of the few from his previous life that he still clings to, despite the slowly fading clarity as his mind works to completely erase who he used to be. She may well be the only woman he's ever truly loved and he's yet to find another like her.