#Arthur fleck

[thehermitsacedia]

[ajokeformur-ray]

So I knit and crochet as a hobby and I’m dying to know, how do you think our dear Mr. Fleck would react to having someone give him a handmade gift? Like a sweater or a hat or scarf or something they knit or crochet for him.

I love that you knit and crochet, that's amazing!! I tried learning how to knit when I was a teen but I could never fully get into it. My grandmother spent hours and hours teaching me but I always dropped stitches and in the end I gave up😭I admire people who can do it and I know Arthur would too!!

Our dearest Arthur will receive the wrapped gift with trembling hands and you can tell just by looking at him that he's trying to ground himself. His breaths quiver just like his hands, his gorgeous emerald eyes are darting all over the place, trying to count five things he can see - and, oh, the way he's counting this gift five times because he just can't fathom the fact that you got him a gift!! You!! - the way he's smoothing his hands all over the gift, the paper crinkling under his reverent touch.

You are content to let him take his time, even after all these years together he's still always just as surprised when you do something nice for him as he was the first time you ever got him a gift.

Slowly, gently, Arthur undoes all of the tape holding the paper together, and tries his very best to unwrap the soft gift without tearing any of the paper. You know he will carefully fold it up and put it in a box stored safely under the bed, for sentimental purposes as well as reassurance during those moments he's unsure if you and your life together is real or not.

When your handmade gift reveals itself, whether it's a sweater, hat, scarf, or anything else, you hear his quiet gasp, the soft intake of breath which catches in his lungs, you see how his fingers almost seem to fly away from the gift before he flexes them and holds the gift tighter, like he's scared that too hard of a touch will disintegrate the gift like memory in the sands of time.

"Y/N," Arthur whispers, his gorgeous eyes filling with tears, "did you make this?"

You nod, his great display of emotion and overwhelming disbelief and gratitude threatening to make you cry, and you smile at him. "I made it for you, angel." A pause, your own anxiety rising now because you put hours into this gift, forgoing sleep and basic needs just to make sure it was done in time, "do you like it?"

Arthur nods, and then his eyes widened, panicking is he, for he thinks he has given you a lackluster response in comparison to the enormity of the gift, "I love it. Thank you so much." Arthur strokes the handmade item and puts it on himself, running his hands all over to feel it, to memorise how it feels, how the warmth is already spreading, "Thank you."

Arthur won't take it off much over the next few days, and every time it has to be washed, Arthur is there practically trying to yank the washing machine door off in his excitement to get the article out of the machine and into the dryer; the quicker it dries, the sooner he can wear it. He never wants to take it off, not ever, and he feels sad every time he has to. To Arthur's mind, it almost feels like a betrayal.

Whether you make him one handmade item or five hundred, all of them are cherished, protected, and loved with every fibre in Arthur's being. They're proof of you, proof of your love for him, and proof that even when you're not with him, you're protecting him with the warmth you gifted him.

After all, isn't that what our angel deserves?

[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]

[daily-joker]

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

[nuooage]

[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

[alifelongpassed]

Arthur Fleck <3 Joker (2019)

[k1ru-https]

Joker 2019 (Wip)

[jokerous]

Arthur Fleck // Joker

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