#batjokes is good in some media but sometimes i think about it and just…

[alien8tdd]

Don’t know anything about this game but I do know the Joker is a cutie patootie in this?? Hello??

[mikeylikeyou]

𖦹 Oh my goodness okay, just a quick discussion post now that I'm on the roll with posting batjokes content. WHY CANT PEOPLE ENJOY MULTISHIPPING!!!!????? I think that as long as your not proshipping characters, have fun with your own opinions of the relationships between characters!!! Media is there for enjoyment and everyone elses own ways of perceiving things, and thats how its made to be. Every now and then some batcat shippers and talia x batman shippers (sometimes even people who ship batman and wonderwoman) come in and yell at everyone that is a batjokes fan about how 'unrealistic' or 'unhealthy' the ship is, forgetting that at most times, thats the point that makes the ship so incredibly interesting and fun! I personally am a multishipper because I find it very fun to see the different variants, wether or not the ship is queer or straight, its always fun to indulge in many perspectives of one peice of media. I personally do not favor batcat except in certain comics, because otherwise they too are an unhealthy couple in the way that doesn't have any interest, or meaning, to it! (In my opinion at least.)

𖦹 By the way, my favorites are batjokes, superbat, bruharvey, batman x plasticman, and many many more!! :DD (Let people enjoy media the way they want and I promise that it wont ruin your own ships, most important thing about liking something is that you are having fun alone or in your own community!!!) (Pls dont argue in the comments!!!)

For those who don’t know, pro shipping is shipping two characters no matter what/without bounds. This means even if there’s age gaps (ped0philia), family relation (incest), and more inappropriate things about the characters themselves.

[oscconfessions]

I will unironically ship cross-show host ships. Not just the ones from the smile crossover, things like AirCorn too where they've never met and have no chance of meeting.

People take issue with literally any ship Airy is in within his own show, which to some extent, I get. But I'm not saying I support actual irl relationships like any Airy x contestant ship, I literally ship BatJokes for God's sake. Having a host x host ship is good because usually their crimes are somewhat on level footing (even though most are treated like jokes), WHICH SIDE TANGENT HERE, I hhhhate people who will call me weird for trying to have a discussion about some of the character's immoral actions from less serious shows. Airy hfjONE for kidnapping and manslaughter is treated so much worse than Popcorn for SPREADING INFECTIOUS DISEASES. Just let me suspend disbelief a bit, ok. Yeah, so anyways, I think AirCorn is good bc Airy to some extent doesn't understand the severity of his crimes, whereas Popcorn does and would commit those crimes again.

I'm an avid lover of toxic ships, not an avid supporter.

I'm a sucker for the other host x host dynamics, too, and I just think we're so lucky to have gotten any crossover content we did, canon or not. TwoPhone has been fed?? I no joke started shipping AnimatiClock like three days before sacri uploaded the crossover, and I had no idea.

I'm trying to think of something else worthy of confession here, but I've already confessed a lot in different sessions, and this isn't an NSFW blog.

I still refuse to watch BFDI and affiliated shows, and I will say I find the writing utterly disgusting in the most literal sense. Gross-out humor is for children, but so is most of the stuff JnJ makes. I just think they could respect their audience's intelligence more. Even kids want well written humor in some ways, and I personally think object shows would do best as 'all ages' media that respect their audience. But JnJ makes so much money that I don't think it matters to them. Side note, I watched a livestream of theirs recently, and they seemed very tired. I could be reading into it, but seeing your audience is only children and that they've been doing this for over a decade, I wouldn't be surprised if they quit sometime soon and leave TPOT etc to be produced without them. I don't know if they have already or if they've talked about it, I don't plan to watch anything else from them, save for the specials with algebraliens in them. Needless to say, I won't keep track of it, and the only reason I'm not an outright JnJ hater is because of how close they work with AnimationEpic and the xfohv content. Other than that, grr.

Love you loads, thank you to anyone reading for your time, I hope you have a joyous day!

- (🫳🫴🦷) (mundane object show ranter, previously untagged)

.

[paperedking]

Ok I read prev comment's thoughts and went, "20k seems high actually lemme double check," except i didn't want to filter out bruce; he is an integral jason's story (as prev mentioned) and removing him could cut some robin!jason-centric fics from our already very short list. so here's my version below:

I started by removing all the incest tags and x reader fics for my own peace of mind. 79,230 --> 55,156

Next I took out every "-centric" tag for every other character/pairing i could think of. 55,156 --> 51,095

*note that while other "-centric" tags are out, "Jason Todd-centric" is not being filtered on.

Then I realized the top fic by hits was a crossover, so let's get those outta here. I filtered for "Batman- All Media Types" to be allowed, but excluded crossovers. 51,095 --> 34,854.

Right. Then it was time to filter out Tim Drake & Jason Todd." They aren't friends. 34,854 --> 29,539

Next, as many of Tim's freeform tags as I could find, and just for the hell of it, Jack and Janet Drake are out too. 29,539 --> 28,620.

*I was expecting more...?

After that, the top fic by hits was still tagged with tim first, so I went ahead and removed any "Caretaker Jason Todd" or similar tags I could find, including "Accidental Sibling Acquisition," and "Good Sibling Jason Todd." 28,620 --> 27,255

The top fic by kudos was still one of those big "batfam" fics though, so I filtered out every "&" tag with every member of the crew EXCEPT Alfred, Bruce, Dick, and Barbara. (Who Jason interacted with as robin.) 27,255 --> 20,901

But then the top fic was literally tagged "crack" so let's get rid of that. 20,901 --> 20,168

Next let's get rid of the Young Justice (Cartoon), Batman: Arkham (Video Games), and Titans (TV) fics. Those are basically whole other fandoms with different Jasons. I'm sure there's more than three different versions of Jason but these are the big ones so we'll stick with them. 20,168 -->18,905

Now for the "Good Parent Bruce Wayne" fics. They'd made it this far but now it's time to go. 18,905 --> 16,742

And then, even though I think they can sometimes be very interesting character studies, I'm gonna get rid of all the fic that pair any canon character with an original character. I love the OCs, guys, but this isn't the time. 16,742 --> 15,222

*This is about when my AO3 started not loading, and I had to rethink some of my filters.

It's about now that I got so entirely fed up with seeing Tim fucking Drake in every fic that I finally just filter his character tag out, even though I had been avoiding doing that for science. 15,222 --> 9,015

Still, the top fic by hits was superbat. The next was batjokes. 9,015 --> 8,841

It's about now that the top fics by hits start looking more like what we're looking for. Unfortunately, the top fics by wordcount have not gotten the message. So I filtered out a couple of popular AUs. We don't want those right now. 8,841 --> 7,250 (6,882 in English)

I'm sure there's more tags I missed, but I didn't want to spend too much more time on this so I ended there. There's probably a bunch of fics in there that aren't properly tagged and would not pass the bat-del test as well.

little more experimenting just for me:

I have a couple of things I hate reading (triggers, distaste, squicks, etc.), so by the time those tags are filtered out it's 6,882 --> 4,929.

(318 labelled as "Jason Todd-centric.")

But prev comment mentioned filtering out Lazarus Pit Madness & Bruce's character tag, so if I do that we're down from 7,250 -->4,276 (4,060 in English)

(2,908 in English with my personal taste)

of those 4,276; only 227 are tagged as "Jason Todd-centric." (215 in English)

(147 tagged "Jason Todd-centric" in English with my personal taste)

There are 3,129 works tagged as "Jason Todd-centric" total, before any filtering.

& just so that no one gets mad at me, I was changing the sort order a bunch so I could find what needed to be filtered out, I don't usually sort by hits/kudos.

can i please go one day without having to skim through a jason centered fic because its not actually jason centered? you cant call something jason centered when he and the other characters only ever talk about bruce or tim! especially if it's just to berate him for not bending over for them

i propose the bat-del test where a fic doesnt pass if the characters have nothing to say except on topics of how much they all should be prioritizing bruce and/or tim's morals/ideals/feelings/plans/etc

[jinxofthedesert]

Hi there! Annoying anon that loves rambling about the Valeska twins is here again 🤣 Let the discussion continue! 😂 Yeah, I totally get your point of writing such stories as a means of fulfilling wishes. I guess it makes sense from the writer's pov that they want to give these characters a different (better) treatment. Valid point, but still, they don't feel real to me.

(Below this is the rest of the messages, put together. Farther down, below the line, are my responses)

It's like I'm reading a story with a character that's called Jerome/Jeremiah Valeska and looks exactly like him, but it's not truly him (just like you said, at their cores they are bad guys). But it's perfectly understandable and all right that people want to give them a rest from their chaotic lives haha 😊 everybody’s got their cup of tea ☕

Damn, yes, these stories are so hard to find! I imagine that writing something of the sort and investing so much in such complex characters can be draining and daunting, so yeah I get the reason why there are not so many fics out there... and OCs are so difficult to write haha you are right. They take too much time and effort 🤣

Yeah, I guess Ecco was not the best example. It's very true what you say about Jeremiah's and Ecco's relationship. In the show it was portrayed as a professional one. So we don't really know if there's anything else beyond that, save for some level of concern. So I guess I should have gone with Bruce instead because, just like you said, Jeremiah went totally bonkers when he realized that Bruce was the only one who saw past his resemblance to Jerome.

Basically, what I was trying to say is that in these fics there's not really that same vibe of evil obsession and lunacy from the twin's side. Maybe just some sort of heightened jealousy when their partner is addressed by other characters, but not in a really "Valeska" way. In fact, it is also strange when Bruce is completely absent in these stories when the twins' obsession revolves around him.

Yeah, there is sooo much to explore, so that is why I am very curious to see how people construe their backgrounds, but usually it's just the repetition of the show with some added scenes and dialogues here and there 😅 I would love to see something a bit different, but well, I guess I am being very demanding 🤣 Don't worry about it and thanks so much for replying! 😘 I am now doing some research in different sites 🤣

It's a bit weird because even though I enjoyed the show, I have to say I merely watched it to see ma broski boys in action 🤣 so If I wasn't so lazy (and didn't have other unfinished projects) I would try to write something (my mind is already full of vague ideas OMGGG 😏🤔😂), but I don't really know much about other characters or subplots, so I would not be sure how to tackle it 🤔 Thanks again for the lovely discussion! 😊

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Hi anon! Don’t you worry about your rambles, they’re not at all annoying! I find it rather fun to discuss the twins. 

I’m sorry you’ve not been able to find the content you’re looking for; usually, I always run into comments on Tumblr or Pinterest about how you look for certain fics and when you can’t find them, then it’s time to try a hand at writing it yourself. I’ve done that and, even though I enjoy writing, it’s still pretty hard, especially to find a drive to do it when I really am not feeling it.  With the twins not feeling real, I understand, ‘course I now think I’m at the point where I might read anything if I’m gifted with more content lol (though there are some tags that, if I see them, I don’t touch if I can help it). 

I think, usually, with most writers, it’s easier to take a character like Jerome/Jeremiah and, instead of doing the tremendous work that comes with trying (emphasis trying) to change them, they do a few things and that’s enough for a road to recovery. Because, most of the time, they’re not writing to change the character, or even to make it realistic; sometimes they’re just writing, or they wanted to try a different aspect. There can be so many reasons and sometimes digging deep and getting a character 100% correct isn’t at the top of the list of what you want in that story. Personally, I’ve learned to broaden my sense of disbelief with characters and just enjoy what I manage to find, especially since the Gotham fic-oriented content is sooooo small 😢

After reading your last message, I actually went onto Ao3 and searched ‘character studies’ under the characters and yeah, there’s not much, I read a few and I honestly wasn’t sure what to think (not to call anyone out). It reminded me a lot of my years reading batjokes on fanfiction or, again, Ao3 where, if you search long enough, there’s a fic for almost all your needs. There have been some good gems in there that delve into character studies and helping these characters try and become better. Comparing that to Gotham’s arrangement of fics is sad, to say the least, but batjokes in all media have a lottttt of years to have such a collection of wonderful content. (Even if you’re only a Gotham fan, stretching out into the actual Batman fandom can be very rewarding, even if your next step is into the Nolan movies or even Batman in general cause you can replace the characters in your head if you really want too)  I think one big problem with Oc’s is that, in a way, they’re easy to make, but in the worst way. You can create a character to put in the place you want, a blank space and they’re just nothing. This comes up a lot in anime type works, where the main character is so blah for the purpose of the audience (reader in our other case) to put themselves in the place of the main character. This also happens in a lot of movies as well, instead of fleshing the character out and allowing them to move and breathe the way THEY would and not how the audience thinks they themselves would. Because of this, oc’s can be very flat. There are the exception, of course although I have no examples since I don’t remember the last Oc story I read . . .  *wracks brain* yeah no idea. Though I’m sure it’s somewhere in my saves.

Even if one doesn’t ship Jeremiah with Bruce, it’s very difficult to ignore/brush under the rug that there was definitely an obsession and that originally, during their weeks of spending time together, building the generator, there started a friendship. The first is very obvious, show-wise (and friendship kinda came with the territory) and the gay subtext can be there if you look at it that way. As much as an interesting character Ecco is, she’s both not important enough in the show (sorry Ecco lovers) or to Jeremiah or to anyone for that matter. While with Bruce and Jeremiah, with how their first meeting go’s and all the meetings that follow after (very willingly on Jeremiah’s part even though I’m sure before this NO ONE was allowed in the inner parts of his bunker for long periods. Probably not even Ecco) the relationship is much more pronounced than anything we’re given prior.  I like to think that even though Bruce was manipulating Jeremiah when they first met, he actually did see him as his own person. Even though he, like Jim and Harvey, have personally bore witness to Jerome’s tyranny. (And that only twists the knife harder when Jeremiah eventually loses his mind because both him and Jeremiah saw him as his own person and in a way Jeremiah doesn’t become like Jerome, he becomes worse)

One could argue that since we didn’t see a ‘true’ way the Valeska’s love that any type of them showing affection might never seem very Valeska. Unless one looks at their reactions and interactions with Bruce as something more than just ‘wanting to kill him’ or ‘obsession’. This would be another reason I’m don’t read much in the oc-area or out of the romantic’s lol mainly because the moment they take Bruce out of the picture, everything seems off. Jerome, while willing to divide his attention, only does it with specific people, who are: Jim, Bruce, Jeremiah, and, on occasion, Oswald (though he’s much less in comparison to the ‘big three’). Other then them, we don’t see him hyper-focus on anyone else in the show, and if he does, it’s for a second and to simply kill them after. If these three aren’t integral to his behavior and actions then things feel flat and out-right ignoring his obsession with Bruce and his inner darkness can be unrealistic. With Jeremiah, this is much worse because in canon, once No Man’s Land starts, all he can think about is Bruce. Everything he does in that setting and before this even started was for Bruce. This type of obsession is . . . well, something that can’t simply be ignored, it’s a big part of his character and also very integral to just who he is after the spray. It may not be as bad at the start of the spray (because he’s too busy rebuilding Gotham in his image) but literally second to that desire is his connection with Bruce. If there were a summary of Jeremiah as a character it would be IMPOSSIBLE to write it without Bruce (same with Jerome though his might be a footnote, depending). So him suddenly focusing on someone else is . . . odd (even with Jim he doesn’t give his full attention too and, in the finale, Jeremiah only starts moving around and doing shit when he realizes that Bruce has come home early and that it’s time to finally come back to the spotlight). Especially since he’s supposed to be the ‘Joker’ in the Gotham world, which, technically speaking, means this obsession with the Bat (a.k.a Bruce) will only ever get worse from here (not to mention the fact he knows Batman is Bruce because he remembers the prophecy Ra’s told him, which we’re shown in the finale when he first sees the Bat and comment’s ‘you’ in a knowing way; this can be argued he’s just recognizing that this is what the prophecy was talking about or that it’s Bruce but personally I think both cause the prophecy was about both of them.).

It’s hard not to repeat things in canon though, believe me, I know and if you ever try writing a time travel story, it’s much worse cause then you have to change literally everything if you’re doing it that way.  Nah, you know what you like; the only problem with that is it’ll be hard to find it most of the time. I wish you luck in searching! Hopefully, you’ll find something.

Same. My older brother introduced me to the show and his way of doing so was first telling me it was a batman show, that I would LOVE Oswald’s aesthetic and that there was a Joker-type character just introduced. I was sold lol. There’s been a lot of drama with the show though, concerning the twins and I honestly wish they’d just stuck with Jerome or if they did still use Jeremiah that he wasn't just . . . a backup plan for killing Jerome off. And, if they’d been allowed to go on for a few more seasons, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they would have also killed Jeremiah and a third (never heard of) Valeska twin (triplet) would show up, playing into the overall Joker lore about there having been three. 😒🤨😑 Which I find humorous because they did so well with Jerome, he was a well-rounded, fleshed out character and, as much as I love Jeremiah, it’s hard not to consider what we could have gotten if Jerome had lived *wistful sigh* I won’t lie that the drama hasn’t affected how I watch it too these days, or at least left me with a lasting impression.  I was very invested in the first few seasons, it was a good show, minus the plot-holes and annoying characters (yes, some annoy me and there are some I can’t stand) but when the twins were on screen, it was probably the show at its best. If they had implicated them more so into the main story I probably would have watched all the way to the end (I can admit, I’ve never seen season five, but I saw many clips, have been completely spoiled and DID watch the finale lol and . . . I think I saw some of season four? Maybe, not sure anymore.) because when they’re also interacting with Bruce, perfection. I could watch that shit for days. 

Also, if you did write it, it wouldn’t have to be about other characters if you don’t want it to be. You’re talking to me, who has never seen the last few seasons and when I wrote my first fic ‘Blindly Evident’ literally all my scenes I had to LOOK UP because I only knew the base of what the scene was even about lol. So sometimes, you can totally bullshit your way lol and somehow it turns out to be really good and you like it. Or it’s just snippets of small scenes with your characters (I’ve been writing a fic like that for awhile because it’s fun and easy and yet you can make it so thought provoking because these snippets are so smallll.) I would implore you to give it a go. Even if you have no idea what the other characters are doing or even what their names are. 

I feel like this has just become me rambling about Gotham and writing tips at this point lol but you’re welcome~ I am here to try and help and always willing to listen about Gotham and talk (or rant, I’m not picky lol). Thanks again for your ask, anon! Hope you find that content you’re looking for 🥰🧡💛

[alien8tdd]

Slowly being converted from batjokes to riddlebat/twobat