#so he tries to humanise Joker and creates a neverending cycle of making a god out of him
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psalmsofpsychosis · 6 months ago
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Haha there is so much on going on here, i need to launch these fuckers to Pluto with a bugs bunny hammer,
"The most basic organisms recognise pain and alter their behaviour accordingly"— Batman is projecting. Joker hurts him, kills his son, his entire family more or less, and Batman doesn't adjust his behavior accordingly. "In his twisted mind pain and injury dont register / humans feel pain and the Joker shares very little in common with humanity." IT'S ABOUT BATMAN NOT THE JOKER. TALK TO ME BRUCIE BOY, HOW IS FEELING LIKE A MONSTER AND HAVING AN UNBEARABLE NEED FOR PAIN AS YOUR ONLY ANCHOR TO YOUR HUMANITY TREATING YA!!
Like— it's all projection. Bruce simultaneously strips Joker of all humanity and fully projects himself unto him; this really drives home the whole "batcave is Bruce's subconscious where all his baser more animalistic urges lie and he takes joker there as a almost-true-to-form Batman replica and he even covers his face with a mask and puts him in a suit to deepen his own immersion and then he tries to beat him (and in extension of it himself) into submission" narrative.
it also tells well on why Bruce goes all out to bring Joker to the brink of death but doesn't kill him— in his mind Joker is him.
so i've been thinking about this
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panel for awhile and, it's not even the first time Batman has threatened to beat Joker up with the precise intention of putting him in a full body cast but not kill him.
You know, that threat actually takes a rather maticulous amount of mental planning and physical control. Gettint someone within 3 inches of death but not kill them takes conscious read on the opponent's body language cues, their physical capacity and their thresholds, their highest pain point before their body gives in, and technically a rather comprehensive intimate knowledge on their internal organs and their medical history. Knowing how to bring someone close to collapse but not straight up flatline is actually a rather intricate controlled process that is subject to each individual's physical state at the moment, especially for the fact that we see Batman getting really really really close to the killing like and very much flirting with it, but never crossing it.
And honestly the presence of that threat —which he keeps telling Joker— is so bizarre and fascinating to me. Pray tell Bruce, how much time have you exactly spent mapping out Joker's body and cataloguing each and every point of it inside and out, enough that would enable you to read his minute physical responses in order to know when to pull a punch and how much?
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