#i love taking the butt of a misogynistic joke and making her a full character

[rebuke-me]

my madeline headcanons!! bc she's my babygirl and i adore her

she is, in fact, actually french. kind of. however, she really didn't have any actual connection to being french until it pissed chloe off. she thinks its funny to mess with people. her last name is fontaine

she'll do ANYTHING for the bit. no one actually knows whats real or whats fake about her, because she's never gonna tell them. (maybe that's a coping mechanism. or not. again, who the hell knows?)

her halloween costume for years running was a mime, because its funny, and she gets to not say a single thing and people think she's just doing it for the bit

she LOVES spicy food. adores it. is white as all hell but has an insanely high spice tolerance.

loved to troll people on club penguin as a kid. she had like 8 boyfriends on there, would make them give her gifts, and then avoid them once she basically drained their money. a real entrepreneur.

doesn't have a best friend, really. she's a floater, and she's mostly fine with that. (mostly.)

her favourite color is orange but she never wears it, mostly because she thinks it washes her out. but she wanted her car to be orange.

her entire family calls her maddie, which she hates and doesn't let ANYONE else call her.

will show up at any party, regardless of whether or not she's invited. she almost has a sixth sense for them. (she doesn't, she's just a master at social media stalking)

has kissed every single member of the squip squad at one point or another. most of the popular kids at parties, michael when they were in middle school, and jeremy one time post-canon as a bit. she kind of only kissed christine because she had to finish the set. she has them ranked on kissing skill.

is insanely good in science classes. she's particularly good at math, but she downplays just how smart she is and doesn't really raise her hand in class.

is on the volleyball team.

had a really big following on musical.ly (and had a minor emo phase she refuses to mention and gaslights anyone about if they remember it)

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

while i will always love and appreciate the bisexual dean winchester agenda, i truly believe that if he was raised differently—or maybe if he grew up today instead—that boy would have been gay. like his love for women in a romantic/sexual context was always such a caricature and was continuously used as a symbol of masculinity that played against the roles assigned to him by his father growing up for the sake of suppressing any queerness he might exhibit. now whether that suppression was purposely written into his character or was a reaction to the character they had created, i’m not sure, but it’s there regardless.

i don’t mean to dismiss the love he felt for cassie or lisa, but particularly with lisa, i’m not sure he was ever in love with her, despite the fact that he did care for both her and ben. i get so frustrated watching the end of s5 because him going to her house and his perfect “apple pie life” being with her in suburbia genuinely came out of nowhere and i’ve never understood a) why it had to happen, and b) why it had to be lisa. but thinking about it in this sense, she was the closest thing he had in his life to everything he was raised to believe he should want by one john winchester, who lost his perfect wife, perfect family, perfect apple pie life and sent all of them down this path in the first place. so of course to dean, his happy ending would be with someone like lisa. but that’s the important part. someone like lisa, not lisa herself. he may have had love for her and he may have been able to picture a life with her, but it wasn’t necessarily because she was everything he wanted; she was a symbol of the things that tore his family apart and so to be with her felt like he was finally able to put some of it back together. and that makes me so sad for him because all of that is a result of the sense of responsibility ingrained in him growing up by john, not something he wanted for himself.

but back to his general attitude towards women, there was an excellent post that said he only acts like the typical womanizer he has a reputation for being around women deemed “stereotypical” by the misogynistic perspective. otherwise, he tends to take on a fairly brotherly role; he doesn’t tend to pursue any women he can “take seriously,” and is more intimidated or impressed by them than anything else. with the exception of cassie (which was pre-series and we never got full context for in the first place), he only ever pursued women with whom he would have a definitive ending—by that i mean women who he knows he’ll never see again or who would have a clearly defined role during the time they’re together that wouldn’t threaten the status quo. and yes these could also be the traits of a commitment-phobe or someone chronically on the move, but for one, sam doesn’t tend to do the same thing (see ruby, amelia, and eileen), and for two, given the things i mentioned already, it makes me consider it more of a result of him not actually being interested in women romantically.

his reaction to women when not purposely used as the butt of a joke or to perpetuate the “womanizer dean winchester” agenda is often so innately fraternal, caring in a way that doesn’t have any expectations behind it. and when there is a romantic context, so much of the relationship can be attributed to the way john raised him and the beliefs he has as a direct result; it’s never simply been built on the foundation of love.

every time he is dismissed as this macho het guy, it also dismisses so much of what makes him a wonderful character, and yes a lot of that is his queerness. so in a world where he didn’t grow up with roles and responsibilities that shaped him into someone he knew his dad hated and forced him to create this character for himself in order to survive? i think he would have been gay and he would have been okay with that.

[bugpoasting]

ok so:

first off disclaimer: i don’t believe in canonical/only One headcanon so if u have other ideas i am absolutely happy to play in that space as well!!! please please please share any other ideas that you might have i would looooove to hear em. and ur familiar with my brand of girl!aus as well (tldr: dont think too hard about it, this is just a fun Sandbox to explore diff dynamics hehe)

anyways so. instead of being a full-bend, i actually see the monkees having a 50/50 girl-guy split, because while the beatles did make it big in america and around the world as four girl band, the bigwig exec is like, okay it worked for them because they’re the beatles, will the American public accept that?? are they ready for that??? no. so they split down the middle: davy and mike are the guys, and peter and micky are the girls 

(author’s note: while i do have the lore answer personally it’s just because a) davy’s schtick only hits if hes a manlet sorry 😭 and b) similarly the specific neuroticism i wanna explore w/ mike is made more fun if he’s a dude. rip)

ok so. their backgrounds are all fairly unchanged. micky’s still a child actor (circus girl?), similar personality, etc. i think that one semi-change to canon is that at first the studio exec felt a little ehhh at micky doing a lot of her physical comedy gags/getting really goofy with it because like “guys can be weird but girls are gross/unattractive when they do the same….” but pretty quickly let up on that sentiment because she is that damn funny. idk unfortunately i dont have many micky-related Girl brainworms atm but i will keep on cultivating them. I do loooove the image her with those long wild curls tho!!!!!

that being said. imagine the fairy tale castle and evil castle meme because that is. the experiences of girl micky and girl peter like i will be honest it is sooooooo bad for her. so yeah, same as irl, she gets cast as the dumb character but it takes on a muuuuch worse misogynistic slant (like, instead of being The Dummy, it’s her being The Ditz and a dumb blonde hippie etc. etc.) and it eats at her. she follows a similar arc i’d say to irl peter during the monkees period (being ok with being the butt of the joke for the laughs at the start, but getting more and more upset because it’s how the Entire World sees her now, losing her credibility as a musician when that was the world where she cut her teeth in, navigating this super shitty situation as a woman and as a neurodivergent person—its incredibly difficult!!!) 

ok changing tune a little bit but one company line for the show is that they’re explicitly banned from having them depicted as interacting romantically (maybe to keep the hijinks family-friendly? to keep the storylines open?) so like idk it’s a genuinely progressive and wholesome depiction of a mixed-gender friend group that all love each other equally but also on the other hand. they were fawkin behind the scenes. 

which is where i get to the fun stuff. and also sorry beloved mutuals but you are going to see now that i do love a tasteful m/f i am so sorry for my sins. anyways. as a relatively new fan i’ve noticed that there’s a jork and a torksmith meta and as a Make My Blorbo As Miserable As Possible enjoyer: i’m going to mash em together. ok so despite there being a blanket dating ban between the four of them because This Is A Money Making Vehicle You Were Assembled To Be A Product and We Cant Have You Fucking That Up With Your Stupid Feelings And Personal Lives. and they’re really harsh on micky and peter in particular because dudes can be sluts it’s called being a rockstar but Not Women we’re not there yet. but of course the general psychological terrorism they experience traumabonds them together and inappropriate workplace attachments Do abound. so first off early on peter has a crush on davy (as. is canon irl) and davy also likes her back but its early enough that they’re actually still scared of studio backlash so they never act on it but its. really fucking cute!!! just like two fumbling teenagers/young adults type adorable. awkward not-dates, making excuses to sit next to each other and spend time together and so forth!!!! but they do get frightened into dropping it and sublimating that All by the fear of backlash/cancellation/fucking everything up right when they’re hitting big but it is agony. but also it’ll pass as all things do. or so they say

which leads me to phase 2 aka torksmith aka hell hell hell. i dont have the best grasp on timeline yet but i say that it first happens around their first tour (so 1966-67, they’re all incredibly stressed and overworked and unhappy about their lack of control over their public images and the manufactured nature of their existence, etc). right off the bat peter and mike have a built-in solidarity as the Real Musicians/Non-Actors of the group and as the older ones. and like.

okay i need to shift into mike mode for a second. the biggest difference between irl mike and this ���verse mike is that the universal constraints (homophobia) that would have prevented him from acknowledging or acting on his attraction to peter are gone so like. it is a definite universal fact that as mike was incredibly into peter from the very start. However, he also was very much Married With A Kid. this is where the hell starts. so the quote i keep on coming back to is from —“he couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head” from succ and that’s kind of the vibe im going for here. as a bozo kid raised in a misogynistic society, women To Him are either just Mothers or Wives and exist within these boxes and any other one outside of them don’t matter to him (he’ll fuck them, cheat on his wife with them. but they aren’t Real you know. even micky isn’t real to an extent because she’s Goofy and he doesn’t want to fuck her). but peter. she’s Everything he doesn’t expect a woman to be and just blows his mind from the start. she’s so incredibly intelligent and talented and can Hang with the men in the room and more, she’s so kind and vulnerable yet whip-smart and strong. bisexual (ahem). a better pure musician than the four of them combined, is connected to the Real music scene to an extent none of them were, and just the furthest thing from A Wife or a Mother or a random meaningless Other Woman but rather this singular bright burning presence seared into his retinas. has big massive huge brown eyes that make you want to drown in them and sadtragicvulnerabledoomed smile. its been so over for mike since the start its sooooo over for him. they fuck that one night during the tour in an exhaustion/alcohol/drug/fear/misery fueled hook up and continue to do it pretty consistently through the rest of the band’s existence. this devastates davy. it is also quite miserable to the two parties involved. for once mike actually feels guilty cheating on his wife Because peter is a Real Person and he has Real Genuine feelings for her and he’s miserable in that regard, the asinine nature of playing house with the wife you married too young feeling grating when you could have been Exploring Consciousness or whatever those damn hippies are doing (could he ever have been the person that peter deserved? could they have actually worked Without the apparatus of the monkees around them? the real answer is No but he doesn’t know that yet). whereas on peter’s side she also just feels miserable though all of this LOL because of the cheating (she lived with them and their kid she’s an awful evil person for homewrecking, sure she can turn a blind eye to mike’s endless infidelities because that’s not her fault but this really directly fucking is!!! and she’d like to think that she’s a good person and trying to contribute Good to the world and this is definitely Not Fucking Good!!!). and to make it worse mike is also awful to her Because he takes out his own anger at himself for his feelings and this situation on her. And she can tell that davy’s also really fucking upset as well but choosing not to open up to her about it because that ship has long sailed. PLUS the later studio disagreements where it’s later revealed that despite them actually being able to wrest musical freedom and Winning their fight, they really are not. that compatible as a real musical group it turns out. they clash over the music, the movie, the money, etc. and its bad. god i even more get in this universe why peter bought her way out of the band despite the insane cost. hell environment hell environment. idek if the love was there but it sure as hell did not save anything. can you count a trauma bond as love?

uhhh other miscellaneous worldbuilding details:

imagined the fairy tale episode but with BOTH peter and michael doing drag and ough I Think I Hauve Covid. they do fuck about it in a genderweird way after And michael does project his self-loathing/repression onto peter for being the Representative of this subversive desire and how bad he really wants it. misery wins once again. hell couple

i will be honest i havent ventured As Far into the laurel canyon group lore yet so i wont make any definitive statements abt them but peter is still very much enmeshed in that group here too

beatles girl!au related: peter and george do fuck that one time. also mike also sleeps with john during the DITL music video filming. if timelines are correct i do believe john has met yoko and is incredibly intrigued by her by then but has not yet consummated things (aka still in her #straight era but definitely questioning things). it’s kind of weird and michael is insanely starstruck the whole time. it also does solidify the fact to Him that he is insanely into girls who are strange and offputting. he is not happy about this. 

ok that’s all of what i have so far!!!! feel free to add on/spitball/brainstorm/throw rocks at me if you think it’s inaccurate (full disclosure i dont think i have a Super Perfect grasp of the monkees lore/dynamics yet so i def probably got some things wrong + the abby misery buff makes All situations 500% more sad and awful even if it may not be as character-accurate. sorry it comes with the brain (mine))!!!!! i love collaboration and Talking and discussing aus and hedacanons hit me uppppppp

Hey @bugpoasting do you have any thoughts on girl Monkees in the Sheatles universe

[themattress]

Rewatch: My Bride is a Mermaid Ep 25 - 26

Woah. Shit got real in these final two episodes!

Episode 25: The Family Game

The start of the episode reveals that Akeno and her superior have been getting their orders from Lord Yoshio Minamoto, a mer-noble who has a fearful grip on the mer-government and can use it for his own benefit...in this case, to break up Sun and Nagasumi so that he can take Sun for his bride. But because his government subordinates have failed to deliver, this spoiled frat boy is stepping in personally with a scheme to make sure he gets what he wants. 

Akeno is to seize on a moment of friction between Sun and Nagasumi to invite the whole Seto Gang to his palace, allegedly for a party full of important merpeople. That moment comes when a basic argument over Nagasumi putting his socks in the laundry while they’re inside-out escalates to the point where Nagsumi and Sun have to confront the fact that their engagement is based on coercion: it was the only way either of them could stay alive. This creates a new emotional distance between the two, especially when Nagasumi stubbornly refuses to apologize. And then....Sun and her family disappears from his life entirely.

While we know that it’s due to Yoshio’s invitation, Nagasumi doesn’t. The whole montage where he goes to various locations he and Sun have been together in the past only to find her absent now, culminating when he enters her empty room and breaks down crying, apologizing to Sun and begging her to come back...damn, that was powerful. The last two episodes already amped up the emotional sincerity, and these two just run with it, with the actual jokes being few and far between when compared to the drama, which intensifies once Yoshio’s so-called party is revealed to be a trap and all of the Setos are knocked out.

Kai and Lunar manage to find out what’s going on, with Lunar’s horrified reaction and her description of how many girls have gone missing while attending Yoshio’s “parties” selling the fear of the situation, while also being heartwarming in how her immediate response is “Sun is in danger!” and dashing off with Kai to mount a rescue. She loves her rival so much. And speaking of rivals who care, Kai doesn’t hesitate in seeking to include Nagasumi in the rescue mission, with his response to Nagasumi’s later vow to go out and get Sun back being “Those are the exact words I’ve been waiting to hear!” Like I said in the last post, Kai has truly grown into a more honorable person (as has Chimp, who is helping him as always).

And if all of that wasn’t heartwarming enough, Nagasumi’s vow only comes after he gets encouragement from Mawari, who tells him that he needs to be honest with his feelings and act upon them, to not give up on his true love. It is also hinted again that Mawari is well aware of the whole mermaid factor at play, but says nothing out of love and respect for everyone. Mawari Zenigata truly cannot have her praises sung loud enough, she is just that awesome.

The ending montage gets you ridiculously pumped to go straight into the next, and final, episode, with the music playing being the most epic the show has ever had as it plays over shots of every character in the show in their current positions. Let’s end this with a bang!

Episode 26: The Place You Go Home To 

Right off the bat, we’re ending it with several bangs, as Kai’s submarine must navigate a minefield set up to defend Yoshio’s undersea lair. The awesomeness kicks in immediately when Lunar uses her siren scream to decimate the mines, declaring “I’m the songstress of the Edomae! DON’T UNDERESTIMATE ME!” She, Kai and Nagasumi will stop at nothing to get Sun back, and their true love of her is contrasted perfectly by Yoshio’s repulsive lust. In the manga, Yoshio was a very different character and his desire for Sun had more to do with a religious factor and a hunger for power. But the anime version of him is the most vile kind of guy possible: a sociopathic frat boy who sees women as objects whom he mind-wipes with a magical artifact before having his way with them and grooming them into his loyal slaves. He is a misogynistic rapist and a person with power who gleefully abuses it, and it makes him the most loathsome character in the show without question. You really want to see him go down.

Once the heroes invade Yoshio’s lair, they are met with an army of guards who clash with the army of Mikawa Conglomerate workers Kai brought along. Lunar assists with her song of war, which again turns things into a bloodbath but one that Nagasumi can easily slip away from to reach Yoshio. Yoshio sends Akeno to face him, since her swordsman’s code says that she cannot disobey a mer-noble’s orders. But ever since she discovered the truth about how Yoshio “woos” the women he lusts after and that he intends the same for Sun, Akeno has been struggling to keep to this code, and it only takes Nagasumi reminding her about the reason she first became a swordsman to get her to switch sides and fight alongside him.

Yoshio unleashes both his trio of giant pet eels and his entire fraternity, but then we get a sequence of awesomeness upon awesomeness as everyone comes in to get a badass moment. First it’s Gozaburo and the rest of the Seto Gang, a moment that concludes when Gozaburo knocks down an eel and, seeing the fierce determination Nagasumi has to save Sun, tells him “you’re a Seto now” and throws him a yakuza jacket as he urges him to go rescue his daughter. Then it’s Lunar, Kai and Chimp catching up, with Lunar using a siren scream to blow the frat away and an injured Kai (supported by his faithful Chimp) also urging Nagasumi to go save Sun. Then it’s an injured Akeno using the nature of the Morning Star blade to her advantage and having Ren (who is the one supporting Akeno because Ren is a fucking goddess among women) use her siren scream on it, which magnifies it enough to knock down another eel. And then it’s, out of nowhere, Papa fucking Edomae (still in the schoolgirl outfit because he’s grown comfy in it) dropping from the sky and taking out the last eel, then tag-teaming with his daughter to take on the reconvening frat. It’s just amazing, and it leads into the climax of the episode when Nagasumi finally reaches the room where Sun is being held and confronts Yoshio, who is ready to kill him with his superior merman strength.

Nagasumi stands no chance against Yoshio in a straight 1-on-1 fight, but he doesn’t care, all he cares about is snapping Sun out of her trance. Yoshio brags that nothing can accomplish that, but Nagasumi pours out all of his feelings for Sun, shouting how he loves her and can’t imagine ever living without her. This does it, and with her mind restored, Sun verbally eviscerates Yoshio for being the pathetic third-rate scum that he is. Full of misogynistic rage and toxic masculinity, Yoshio aims to shoot Sun dead, but Nagasumi takes the bullet. And yet he is unharmed, because just being with Sun, simply standing by her side as lovers and as equals, fills him with unlimited power - the Power of Love! With Sun now intentionally directing her love as energy to power Nagsumi up, Yoshio gets the beatdown he deserves.

As awesome as this is, I still have one minor quibble about translation issues in this scene. Sun’s altered catchphrase comes back to bite the show’s butt when Nagasumi tells Yoshio what it is that makes a real man - in Japanese, it’s ninkyo, aka chivalry, which is displayed on screen as text when he says this. But in the dub, it’s “Honor Among Thieves”. Huh!? So all real men must be thieves? Things get more absurd when Nagasumi gives Yoshio his final beatdown, the text of the Japanese title Seto No Hanayome appears with each punch for some reason, and I guess that reason got lost in translation because we instead get Yoshio screaming “My! Bride is! A! MERMAAAAAAAID!” to get the same effect of a title drop in this moment. There is no reason in context why he would say this, as he had already given up on Sun as a bride and had attempted to kill her, so it just ends up as a huge “WTF!?” moment.

Anyway, Yoshio is defeated and his true form is exposed: a lowly catfish. All of the fear he inspired and thus the power he had is instantaneously gone with this revelation, allowing Akeno’s superior to legally indict him for his crimes. Nagsumi finally apologizes to Sun for the argument and says that from now on he wants their engagement to be something they chose for themselves. And so, taking out the ring he got her in episode 2, he asks Sun if she’ll marry him. Of course Sun says “Yes”, and as the original ED credits song plays, they embrace.

There’s a gag scene before the credits of life returning to normal except for Nagasumi now insisting on remaining in “buff mode” which makes all the routine interactions with the other characters more ridiculous, but after the credits we get a still-frame of Sun and Nagasumi’s earlier embrace, so for all intents and purposes that’s the note this show ends on: two kids from two different worlds who, against all the many, many obstacles, found true love together.

There’s one more post about the series to go, but my experience of actually rewatching the show is over with. And let me tell you - it’s been a great revisiting that I do not at all regret.

[radramblog]

we live in a society (that has progressed)

There’s always an interminable shift, a flux, in culture that can be hard to spot if you don’t quite know what you’re looking for. As times change, people grow, and media is released, causing perspectives and opinions in the general psyche to sway over the course of human cultural history.

Basically, the Joker is allowed to be funny again, and that’s a good thing.

I’m not going to bother explaining who the Joker is to you, like I often do when I’m introducing a post like this. It’s the fucking Joker, I’d be shocked if you didn’t know what the character is. You have to be online to see this post, after all, and if you’re on the obscure rabbit-hole known as My Tumblr, you’re online enough to see Joker memes and such.

The Joker is an inherently ridiculous character. He’s literally a clown man, a foil to the deadpan Batman, humour literally written into his name. And while I cannot possibly capture the full breadth of his various iterations and interpretations over the course of DC Comics’s long history, a lot less people are going to have read the comics than seen the adaptations of such, and those are what has stuck out in the public consciousness. There’s a few versions in particular I’d like to highlight before I get into the meat of this.

In particular, the early visual interpretations of the character are, well, monumentally silly. It’s impossible to talk about the 1966 Adam West Batman series without an understanding of just how camp the whole thing was, and the Joker is no exception to this. Even Jack Nicholson’s performance in the 1989 film is inherently silly despite it’s overall serious tone, a villain who kills people with a chemical called, I shit you not, Smylex. Considering the actor, and especially considering what came just a year before that film, such a portrayal is actually kind of a confusing cultural milestone.

And that thing that came a year beforehand is The Killing Joke, potentially the most iconic Batman comic, nay, DC comic there is. And with it, potentially the most sympathetic portrayal of the Joker that there had been so far. A man driven mad by exposure, a situation he was only in to afford his family’s bills. It presents the most clear image of him as Batman’s mirror- literally, at times, and yet shows some of his most shocking brutality at the same time. The idea of the comic, if I may be so bold, is to imply that the line between Batman and the Joker isn’t quite so thick as it appears at first glance.

We don’t talk about the animated version of the Killing Joke.

I’m going to move right past the Animated Series in general, not because it’s bad or anything, but because I’m relatively unfamiliar with it (this may be a reoccurring theme) I’ve only seen a handful of episodes, the ones my family had on VHS, and they sure didn’t have the Joker in them. (The Gray Ghost and….I think a Scarecrow episode? Which was a hell of a thing to see as a kid). It does have his portrayal with Mark Hamill as the voice actor, though, which is frankly such a choice decision.

The thing that made the Joker, and the Batman franchise as a whole, come back into the limelight was obviously the Nolan movies, specifically The Dark Knight. Being the face of such a critically acclaimed movie with such an incredible performance by Heath Ledger (I am obliged to stan, he’s from Perth, I’ve met his stepdad) is obviously going to get the name back in the books, even if it’s such a different version from what had previously been seen.

Ledger’s Joker has a humour, sure, but it’s a significantly more morbid one than previous incarnations. Previous Jokers killed people, sure, but The Dark Knight added a level of brutality to the whole thing that made the character so much more serious, pun not intended. One can largely attribute this to the darker tone of the film he appears in compared to previous Batmans (especially the 90s films), because in those versions the Joker was, well, not a serious character. He doesn’t interact with the world in the same way other people do, his values are completely alien. Ledger’s Joker has a very specific ideology, one people can understand, and more relevantly, one people can misunderstand.

The actual post begins here.

Ledger’s Joker has been the icon of the edgy teenager since The Dark Knight came out and was watched by millions of them. Something about the character speaks to them, something about being an outsider, not like the other people, and also both smart and violent, which are attributes that 13-year-olds idolise.

A Joker profile picture has long been one of the biggest red flags on the internet. A sure sign that someone is going to say the dumbest fucking thing imaginable, or something hideously offensive apropos of absolutely nothing. This isn’t even getting into how the character became an icon for the Gamers Rise Up movement, which I will remind you that a fair few people actually took seriously. A legion of the worst of nerd culture- misogynistic, racist, and toxic folks who have nothing better to do than yell at people on Reddit.

Where as I, the cultured individual, explain things to people on Tumblr. Very different. But the point is, this specific version of the character is an anarchist, out to prove that, at the end of the day, every single person has the potential to become a monster, that chaos is the nature of humanity, somewhat akin to his portrayal and point in The Killing Joke- all it takes is the right thing to set you off. This twisting of the message into “im better and smarter than u also I will kill u” is frankly kind of disgusting.

The point I’m trying to get to is that for the last decade-ish, The Joker, a character built around humour and gratuity, has become incredibly unfunny. From the internet fuckwits to the grim Ledger portrayal, the character with Joke in their name has been impossible to laugh at.

Another factor contributing to this is the growing awareness and increased sympathy for mentally ill people, which is where Joker (the film) comes in. Now, obviously, the understanding of mental issues is not a bad thing, and I’d love to see this trend continue. But my understanding is that Joker and its titular character are not a particularly humourous time, despite the character literally being a comedian this time.

To be clear, I have not seen the movie, and I have no intention to, so feel free to completely ignore my opinion on this. But the fact that the film seemed to have made all the GRU stuff worse is not a good sign for it.

However, as in life and in media, all things shall pass, and that does include the Joker. Ignoring Suicide Squad (because I know like nothing about the Joker’s place in that film and don’t want to research it), late 2010-s on portrayals of the Joker appear to be returning to the characters roots somewhat, though to be fair, both of the things I’m basing my judgement are comedy features.

The first is, oddly enough, the Lego Batman movie. I can understand not having seen this film, because from the outside, it didn’t look or sound good, but the whole thing is basically a love letter to Batman/DC as a franchise, complete with possibly the silliest incarnation of the character so far. This Joker is utterly obsessed with proving himself as Batman’s equal, as the greatest villain to rival the greatest hero. He’s probably the most potentially homoerotic interpretation, which is kind of silly considering he’s literally a Lego dude. But the movie is funny, and so is he, which is the key point.

The other recent addition to this list is the Harley Quinn animated series, where the Joker obviously plays a significant role. Now, I’m not really familiar at all with this interpretation, having not seen the show, but considering the memes going around about Batman apparently not doing oral, and that having stemmed from this show, it’s not hard to imagine the Joker’s portrayal being similarly silly- even if his canonical abusee is the protagonist. Like, I’m pretty sure he’s a bastard in this one, but he’s also the butt of the joke, considering the series is in large part about Harley getting over him and moving past that part of her life (and ideally hooking up with Poison Ivy, because, come on)

I guess my point is that the Joker is an inherently comic character, in all that entails. You cannot have the Joker not be in some way silly without making massive changes to his design, his characterisation, and his ideals- which is pretty much what has happened in the past few years. I mean, the guy’s got bright green hair, he wears purple suits, he kills people with laughing gas.

This comic, by artist FruitEater, is kind of what inspired this whole post. It’s such a silly little thing from a silly little trend, but it really stuck in my head, and not just because it reminded me of my past self- a child who was super into Crazy Frog when I was, like, 10. It’s a comic that couldn’t exist were it not for the passage of time beyond the era of edgy Joker. Time has moved on- Gamers Rise Up is dying (the subreddit got banned, where else are they supposed to go?), cringe culture is dying, and the Joker is a character that’s allowed to be funny again.

We can laugh with the Joker again.