#I'm not even talking about my beloved OC Isabel here either. this is Jerome's show. FOR NOW

[jokerfic]

Not you popping out of nowhere a year later with a new fic in a fandom I'm going to have to learn about so that I can read it

the way I'm literally so sorry it's not Dark Knight Joker (I've been putting in work on that fic too this year, I promise! it's sitting at 70 pages and if this frenzy of productivity lasts I hope to turn it towards that next, Ledger Joker is somehow always easier for me to write in the winter) but the heart wants what it wants when it wants it, and Jerome Valeska, who is a bigger flirt and a better boyfriend to an OC (somehow, despite the… atrocities) than TDK Joker is what this heart wants right now.

but since I've got you can I give you (and anyone else out of the know) my elevator pitch on Gotham FX right quick? There'll be some spoilers but only the kind of spoilers I think you need to hear to decide whether or not you want to watch this show, I prommy. THANKS

ok SO do you ever find yourself wondering when comic book properties got so BORING? do you ask yourself where all the color went? do you find yourself nodding along when your buddy complains that if comic book show writing is gonna be so shitty, it might as well also be fun? look no further than seasons 2-5 of Gotham I promise you will not regret watching seasons 2-5 of Gotham

(season 1 was when they were committed to trying to run it like a straight prequel where Batman and his entire Rogues gallery wouldn't exist for another 20 years, and they also thought they were making a gritty detective show about the GCPD, although nobody was allowed to say fuck and everyone both outside of canon and in it knew that the best place to "detect" criminals in Gotham was inside the GCPD itself, but fortunately they gave that up after one season and switched over to just doing a kidfic version of Batman with a slightly-younger-but-still-weirdly-adult-given-that-they're-beefing-with-a-12-year-old Rogues Gallery)

Gotham, once it hits its stride in season 2, thinks it's a comic book movie from the 90s. Gotham thinks it's a comic book run from the 90s, period. I think almost every major character dies and comes back to life at least once. It's in the same nebulous simultaneously modern and steampunky-old-fashioned time period as A Series of Unfortunate Events and they lean harder into the design with every season that passes. Nobody has any common sense and NOBODY talks like a person. Gotham features the wettest, cuntiest version of Oswald Cobblepot I've ever seen and at one point he gets fake haunted (? it's been a while, I'm not clear on that point anymore).

At some point they cast Cameron Monaghan as a character they named Jerome Valeska and they're like "Okay, Cam. You are playing a PROTO-JOKER. The real actual Joker isn't around yet and besides we don't have the rights to him, so be subtle, right? Play it cool. Just tasteful hints." And Cam went "10-4, heard you loud and clear, dw about a thing" and then proceded to blast everyone's nips off when he did what every actor to play the Joker after Heath Ledger has been desperate to do and THEN some-- not only did he play the spiritual successor to Ledger's Joker, but he played the spiritual successor to Nicholson's Joker, he played the spiritual successor to Hamill's Joker, he did his own thing, the shifting nature of the role meant he was able to be like 6 different Jokers at once and every single one of them fucks. Like, I legitimately 100% believe his performance on this not-quite-CW-Batman TV show made a big enough splash that it played a part in the DC execs looking at Jared Leto's Machine Gun Kelly-meets-Spirit Halloween Mallrat Joker cosplay and going "…I think I've had enough of this guy," thank God.

(They do introduce Jerome in Season 1, though, so you might have to watch the first season after all. sorry.)

Obviously Jerome is TO ME the heir to the Joker throne with no contest at all, not even a little bit, and besides him, the show is a blast and feels like what Batman felt like to me as a little kid-- like the 90s movies, like the animated series. Is it GOOD? I'm obviously too emotionally compromised to give you a solid answer. I suspect not, but if you're like me (and if you like my writing, then I think you probably are), you don't need good as much as fun and interesting, and Gotham is definitely that. It's streaming on Max, but if for SOME incomprehensible reason you don't want to watch one literal hundred 40-minute episodes of Riverdale-but-make-it-Batman, I am 100% amenable to uploading the 13 episodes that feature Jerome onto my google drive and posting the links here for anyone who wants them lmao. (If it's not obvious, it's the sort of show where you don't really have to watch everything to figure out what's going on-- it's a soap opera, you'll get the gist.)

ok that wasn't so much an elevator pitch as it was a stuck-on-the-bus-with-a-guy-who-won't-stop-trying-to-get-you-to-join-his-cult pitch but give it some thought anyway, ok? ok. love you bye