#Arthur fleck

[starn707]

[jadenvargen]

joining the war on joker 2 on the side of joker 2... LADY GAGA YAOI NOW

[jokerous]

Joker: Folie À Deux (2024)

[tampire]

Jeremiah being chummy with Thomas Wayne in Gotham / Joker getting punched by Thomas Wayne

[stevenrogered]

JOAQUIN PHOENIX as ARTHUR FLECK Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

[rovingotter]

Heavy spoilers for Joker: Folie à Deux beneath the cut.

Joker 2019 is a movie that is often misunderstood, and one that means a lot to me.  It doesn’t quite manage to nudge out some of my childhood animated favorites like The Last Unicorn and Watership Down, but Joker is definitely in my top three favorite live action movies.  It got me back into writing fanfic after a long dry spell.

I didn’t think it needed a sequel.  Most people didn’t.  The first movie told the story it needed to tell.  I was wary going into this.  After hearing that it was a musical (and with Gaga as Harley?), I didn’t know what to expect but I thought that even if it was bad, even if it completely misfired, it would at least be an entertaining and funny trainwreck. 

Turns out, it’s not funny at all.  This movie gutted me.

I wish it didn’t exist.  The experience of watching it was…I’m still processing it, but I think I can say at this point that it was an unpleasant experience, but also a captivating one.  I hate it but I also weirdly have a higher opinion of it than most people seem to.  I feel like it was tonally true to the first movie.  I think Phoenix and Gaga both breathed life into their roles.  The musical numbers didn’t seem strictly necessary but they also didn’t detract from the experience for me. Music was an important element of the first movie as well.

I also think the central premise is an interesting one.  Arthur, incarcerated in Arkham, is facing the possibility that he’ll be sentenced to death for the murders he committed in the first movie.  His lawyer is aiming for an insanity defense and tries to convince the jury that the Joker is a separate personality—that Joker, not Arthur, killed those people.  In order to save his own life, Arthur needs to convince the jury that he’s not Joker…or he can take a different path. He can say "fuck it," fully embrace the Joker persona and live whatever time is left laughing and watching everything burn.  This is what Harley "Lee" Quinzel, who admires Joker and the chaos he represents, wants him to do.

In the end, he does neither.

After being forced to sit in silence for days and listen to a defense that both infantilizes and dehumanizes him, reducing him to a set of symptoms, stripping him bare and putting all his pain and humiliation on display, Arthur can’t take it anymore.  He fires his lawyer (who represents his best hope of survival) and elects to represent himself.  Initially he tries to represent himself as Joker, to lean into that persona, but he’s not feeling it anymore…especially after the confrontation with Gary Puddles, the guy who was probably his only true friend before he became Joker.  In the first movie, Arthur spared Gary’s life but left him deeply traumatized after he witnessed the death of Randall, the coworker who bullied Arthur.  This conversation with Gary was one of the most riveting parts of the movie for me.  There is a nakedness and rawness to it. Arthur tries to say "fuck it," but ultimately, he can't. Not in the face of Gary's pleading and pain.

After this, some horrible things happen to Arthur in Arkham.  The guards beat him and brutally assault him.  They kill his fellow inmate who tries to offer him support, because the system is still ruthless and still failing vulnerable people.  Arthur is left broken, helpless. Again. Some people have interpreted this scene as the reason he ultimately sheds his Joker persona, but I think it would have shaken out differently if not for that earlier conversation with Gary.  Because Gary is possibly the only person who truly cared about Arthur, when he was only Arthur—a fellow outcast, and the only guy who never made fun of him. 

Joker makes fun of Gary, because Joker makes fun of everything.  And Arthur realizes that he’s not—doesn’t want to be Joker. At his core, he's sick of pain and violence, both his own and other people's. He wants to try to break the cycle.

In the end, Arthur stands before everyone not as Joker but as Arthur Fleck—he stands alone and naked, shattered, traumatized, with no remaining allies, and he takes responsibility.  He says that he did those things.  He did them because he was having a mental breakdown, yes, because he was wounded and wronged by an unjust world, but he regrets it, now.  He hurt some bad people, but he also hurt some people who didn’t deserve it.  He’s tired of being the clown.  He just wants to live.  That was all he ever wanted, really.  Just a little bit of kindness and respect.

This is his truth:  Joker is a part of him, but a part that was born out of pain.  His deepest self is Arthur. In admitting that, he lays it all on the line, in that moment. And this is, in my opinion, the bravest thing he could have done.  I had my hand over my heart for this whole scene. 

And for this small, fragile act of courage, he is utterly forsaken by the world.  Lee—the one person who he has a connection with—is in love with Joker, not Arthur.  She walks out of the courtroom.  She abandons him in his moment of greatest need—not out of malice, but out of weakness. Because she wants to live in a fantasy world and she can't handle the reality of who he is:  not an embodiment of chaos and power, not a symbol, but a man, a vulnerable man who is full of regrets but who is trying, in his own confused way, to be better.

The first movie was bleak but it offered a glimpse of a twisted kind of hope at the end with Arthur finding inner peace even as he’s condemned to a life in psychiatric incarceration for his actions.  This movie takes that bit of hope and grinds it into the dust.  It’s a tragedy, through and through.

Arthur’s random, pointless death at the end feels almost redundant because it’s made clear by that point that his spirit has already been slain.  His connection with Lee was all he had, and when it’s revealed to be an illusion, that’s it.  He can no longer exist as the Joker but he can’t exist as Arthur, either.  He tried his best and was rejected for it.  It didn’t work.  He’s done. 

There are a lot of takes about how this movie should have gone, and honestly, most of them sound terrible to me.  I think this is the only way a sequel could have gone while remaining honest, which is why I didn’t want a sequel.

You can’t hear me, Arthur, but I love you, and I’m proud of you for standing before the world as yourself, and you didn’t deserve to die the way you did. 

This world is fucking cruel.

[iartsometimes]

[fleckcmscott]

Prelude

Summary: Arthur prepares for the marvelous in the midst of the mundane.

Words: 994

Warnings: None

A/N: This short story was inspired by two LPs my husband and I picked up. It's an extension of Ch. 7 of Watch What Happens. I couldn't get the image of Arthur's nervous excitement out of my head! Thank you very much to @sweet-nothings04 for beta-ing! 💜

If you have any thoughts or questions, please comment, feel free to message me, or send me an ask. Requests for Arthur and WWH are open!

Arthur was a man preoccupied by possibility and the possibility of failure.

The living room corner that served as his closet had vexed him for nineteen minutes. He was no closer to an answer than when he'd waded into the two-by-two space. The hems and buttons were at once too dressy. Too casual. A mishmash of ho-hum. If only he knew what she found attractive on a guy...

A cigarette sparked. He took a smooth, soothing drag. Nicotine permeated his lungs, flowed through his limbs, and to his racing mind, stalling his jitters enough for Y/N's invitation to replay between his ears.

"I can't wait to see you, Arthur."

Excitement overtook his nerves, hurtled towards an unseen finish line. He reached past his spotted teal button-up (the confidence for that would come later) for his collared red sweater. Less formal than his rust red suit, neater than a baggy cardigan. This would work.

The weight of one choice off his shoulders, he went to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee.

"Murray Franklin's starting," Penny called from behind him. Her slip-on slippers scuffed their way from the bedroom to her easy chair, which creaked when she sat down.

"Yes, mother," he said, mild and distracted. He poured unshelled almonds in a wood parquet bowl and grabbed the nutcracker. Made mugs of coffee for Penny and himself. After setting hers on the coffee table, he padded to the dining table in the opposite corner, where his journal awaited his latest musings.

"After I woke up this morning," he wrote. "I thought Y/N, Y/N, Y/N. Had a dream about her but forgot it. I'm going to her place for dinner tomorow!! I wunder what she'll cook for me. I need to practice my smile."

He cracked a nut, popped it in his mouth, chuckled warmly amidst chews. This would be his first evening spent with someone other than his mother. That he wouldn't be alone. A plan instead of happenstance, a meal shared instead of served. How wonderous, how marvelous it would be to be alone with someone. To be alone with her.

One of his mood music LPs had a "Guide to a Night of True Romance" printed on the back. It'd lent him a concrete idea of how he wanted their date (it was definitely a date) to go down.

He was a man of few words; tomorrow he would have to be a man of more words. He'd started with light banter, low pressure and fun, relax into the small talk appropriate for The Cocktail Hour. Lush melodies would play in the background during the meal, filling any gaps in conversation. Simple ways to recreate the intimacy he felt whenever they walked together or talked on the phone.

"He's so handsome," Penny said, a wistful observation destined to reach the wallpaper and no further. "Look at those sparkling white teeth."

Arthur jotted another note: "Check if anything is stuk in teeth before leaving!!!"

Y/N would tell him he was handsome and funny, and that she didn't mind his smoking. He'd pay her subtle compliments, say what he'd been too shy to over pie. That she was pretty and sweet. That he liked her smart style and the length of her fingernails. That he had a major crush on the bow of her lip, if that was okay, and a major crush on her, too.

That he longed to be close to her.

A commercial blared in the periphery, a Chapstick guarantee for irresistible lips. Available in six flavors, including Lemon Tree, Chocolate Mint, and Cherry Kiss.

How would Y/N taste?

Though innocent, the suggestion lurking in that question fanned a flush across his chest. Face a radiator about to steam, he ducked his chin. Gary's earlier mention of "dessert" floated to the forefront. Arthur swallowed a laugh. Would she really want to do that already? Would he? Fantasizing about her was one thing; actually going to bed with her was another.

Kissing would be a good start. His pulse quickened at the thought, a well-acquainted wish that he never tired of rehearsing in his head. Maybe it'd start with a dance. She'd said she wasn't good at it, but that was all right. He'd be able to guide her.

His palm charting a path down her side, their feet coming closer together. Toes touching, knees brushing. His lips pressed to hers, her hands on his back. The tiny murmurs she'd make against his mouth, his fingers at the seam of her-

"Ooh, Julie Madison is on." Penny's talent for pricking his dreams like a tungsten needle chimed in. "Happy, you're missing it. What are you doing?"

"I'm busy, mom!" Couldn't she go to bed so he could plan in peace? And search his VHS collection for Dr. Sally segments - just in case? He tapped ash into a pink ashtray. "I have a date tomorrow night."

A light laugh, not unkind but tainted with disbelief. "Oh."

"I do," he said, turning to glare at her. "I'm going to Y/N's. The paralegal from Missouri?" He winced at the impatience in his voice. Mashed his cigarette into a mass of cellulose and guilt. He went to sit on the sofa, on the end closest to Penny. "I'll help you with your bath after your nap." He lifted her untouched cup of coffee towards her. "And I'll make you dinner before I leave. Okay?"

It took her a few seconds to respond, her eyes far away before her face split into a small grin. She took the mug and turned back to Murray's interview. "Okay, Happy."

Conscience eased, Arthur lit a fresh Stutton. Settled back into the worn cushions and the comfort of his imagination. As Ellis Drane and his Jazz Orchestra swung the show into an ad break, the saxophones tapped another vein of inspiration. Chuckling, Arthur blew smoke towards the ceiling.

How awfully nice it would feel to have Y/N's hand in his.

~~~~~

Tag list (Let me know if you want to be added!): @harmonioussolve​​​​​ @ithinkimaperson​​​​​ @sweet-nothings04​​​​​ @stephieraptorr​​​​ @rommies​​​​​ @fallenstarsabyss @gruffle1​​​​​ @another-day-in-chuckletown​ @hhandley80​​​​​ @jokerownsmysoul​​​​​ @rafaelbottom @ralugraphics​​​​​ @iartsometimes​​​​​ @fleckficgirl @chaimshelii

[daily-joker]

Brendan Gleeson and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie À Deux (2024)

[nuooage]

[subway-not-fresh]

WHY ISN'T THIS GETTING ENOUGH ATTENTION. I'M LITERALLY SO MOVED BY YOUR ART. THANK YOU FOR GRACING US, OP.

[thehermitsacedia]

[fyeahvillains]

ARTHUR FLECK | THE JOKER Joker (2019) dir. Todd Phillips

[darknessisafriend]

Many wanted to see Joker, the killer clown, all cared about him. And who cared about Arthur Fleck? As he said "If I was dying on the sidewalk you'd walk right over me" and Todd philipps is showing the audience is the same as Gotham, a mirror to our face

People pity Arthur but in the end people desire Joker

PS: not saying that all that dislike Joker 2 are incels or such. Or that you are not allowed to dislike the movie. The movie is far from perfect, has flaws and has picked risky choices

[jokerous]

Arthur Fleck // Joker

JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX (2024) dir. Todd Phillips