#the amount of times I've read a fic and could easily see the narrative happening in canon has happened so frequently

[furashuban]

Honestly since joining the fandom last year nothing could've prepared me for how quickly the amount of Magic Misfits fics and fic writers would grow over such a relatively short amount of time (like every time i check the tag i see couple new fics or more each month in AO3 :0). And with a small and niche fandom like ours it's literally just the coolest thing ever <33

[battybrownboodeactivated]

Outing myself as the anon, which I asked before I started my fic, or early on, which is easily about to surpass 100k words at this point. And the sigh of relief to see that I have implemented some of these things in my fic already! Because I hold your opinions and analysis of them with such high regard. You wrote my favorite batjokes fic after all. I, however, am shit at analysis, I prefer to write analysis out in long, drawn-out story form apparently, but I'll try.

So yes, so much to agree with. The nuances and complexities of all of this, doing justice to an in character depiction of them getting together, boy it's hard. I think that's why my fic became an enemies with benefits slow burn, because of so much mentioned here.

Rehabilitation isn't even on the table for all the reasons you mentioned, never really was in my fic, but turned into intense factors that forced them to confront their stubborn dance around each other. I essentially had to place them into extreme psychological circumstances for the cracks to form in their dance even a little. Only then could I bring up a lot of pushed off confrontation, things relating to Bruce's controlling tendencies, desires to save people to an almost manipulating way, a lot of times to his detriment and alienation of his loved ones (joker included) and that clashing with Joker's mental illness/ killing/ views on the world. Yup, that doesn't just go away if they're fucking. In fact, Joker may get distracted for periods of time (sex is a hell of a distraction), like kill less people or maybe not kill as many innocents for the sake of keeping Bruce around a little bit, or not wanting these bonus additions to go away (and even then he'd be like, so egotistical about it) but he isn't ending his career and suddenly shifting from his nilhilistic views on the world to be with Bruce.

Bruce sees the Joker as more than his murderous, killer clown mythos, and that is fucking terrifying for Joker because yes, being seen as human. The vulnerability there. It would turn his entire world upside down, like he found his purpose and he needs to be in control of his own narrative more than anything. The amount of trust there is insurmountable. Bruce needs to at the end of the day, be willing to loosen his grip a bit on that control, give in a little, make some sort of consolation with his reckless, selfish desire to be with Joker. And the Joker would have to see himself as human enough and deserving enough to be with Bruce even if the killing and dancing, well, didn’t stop, cause i personally dont want it to stop, its what makes this relationship so intense and addicting, but perhaps didn't have to be the only option. That they could do more than that too.

And can they make that happen? With a lot of fucking work and patience, MAYBE. The crazy, deliciously codependent thing about it all is, Bruce, pushing the controlling shit aside for a moment, would be patient and would be there no matter what, cause he kind of already is even without them fucking/ established. He's the only one that wants the Joker to live, and he will always be willing to see humanity in the Joker when nobody else will. The Joker will both hate and love that about Bruce. And so there dance would continue, perhaps with more moves, but an established relationship would never be normal, perhaps it could have a little more healthy aspects, but copendent, obsessed, alienating those around them, all that is why I go so hard for this ship in the first place.

I hope this made sense. I'm just some dude that got into batjokes like 7 months ago and have been researching and reading canon and fandom content more than my actual college work, so I'm very much a newbie in a lot of ways. But I've tried my damndest to give an honest attempt at batjokes enemies with benefits to an eventual "established" relationship, whatever that really means for them. I honestly have so much more to say (like evidence that joker would entertain more aka killing joke and stuff he said during amnesia time) but for now rant over! @distort-opia, you fucking rule atop batjokes mountain btw go you.

I'm wracking my brain with what Joker would do in an established situation, like how would he keep those homicidal urges at bay (sex and intimacy can only go so far I imagine) and also there's so much unacknowledged mental health concerns. Bruce would just have to always be ready to pick up the pieces I feel like (God these two are a tragic mess). I don't think normalcy is possible but I don't think their relationship is built for that anyway (I've been writing notes down for a story for days and it's just been consuming me)

An actual relationship between Bruce and Joker is a very complicated thing to imagine, yeah. I agree with you that normalcy is entirely out of the question-- as in, a typical "healthy" relationship. What I think they could have is something that works, but not something that most people would understand or approve of. If you're writing a story, I would say it depends on how they got into the relationship a lot, and if Bruce is compromising as much as Joker perceives he is. For instance, a rehabilitation scenario inherently implies a power imbalance, which Joker would resent and Bruce would not be able to help not taking advantage of. This would not end up working out, in my opinion, unless they got back on equal footing somehow. So a scenario with them an equal footing is what I will be rambling about.

Joker's homicidal urges and mental health issues are indeed a big obstacle. It'd take a whole lot for him to even agree to try for a relationship that involves something other than violence, but this denotes a willingness to compromise from the start. It means he cares about Bruce enough to risk opening the door to his humanity, something that he's very keen on eradicating. Joker can allow himself to love Batman as long as love equals destruction; but once love begins to mean more tender things, things that only people and not monsters can feel... it's a threat to his very identity, to his very core. Hence, just the fact that Joker is in an established relationship means that he's accepted, one way or another, that he's a human being.

Human beings don't need to kill people. Monsters do. It's relevant to note that Joker has an incredible capacity to reshape himself. He's done so multiple times in canon, and always in relation to what he perceived Batman needed. He was murderous when he emerged, but after Robin appeared on the scene he went for funny silly gags, and then he recreated himself back into a horrific threat... In his head, Batman -- the drive to see meaning in all life, to fight for sense in one's existence -- is the force of nature that he's the opposite of. Joker molded himself as the force of chaos: he kills carelessly, sometimes almost joylessly, because he believes he's embodying the true way the world works (though he's shown signs he'd like to be convinced otherwise).

After all, like his fall in the acid and the trauma he went through proved, catastrophe is random. It doesn't matter if you're good or evil, if you've got a family or if you're alone, if you've contributed to society or not. You can get run over by a bus, you can have a heart attack, you can mix the wrong medications, you can get shot in the head by a madman because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. My point with this is that Joker sees himself as an agent of the cruel randomness of existence, and him killing people is very much part of it. So if he stopped seeing himself as an inhuman force for chaos, I think killing would not be a necessity anymore.

That's not to say he wouldn't think of other people's lives as worthless or that he wouldn't instinctually want to kill someone because they're inconveniencing him as some kind of fly buzzing around, but it does mean he wouldn't need to do it. Being with Bruce undermines the very point of being Joker, it means being a person instead of raging at the world. In an established relationship, he'd need to once again reshape himself, figure out who he can be. It'd be very difficult, if you add Bruce's controlling tendencies in the mix. You mentioned Bruce always having to pick up the pieces, but the thing is, Bruce would want to. He'd want to do that too much, he would enjoy seeing Joker be vulnerable, because afterwards... Bruce would be able to put those pieces back together the way he wants them to be. And Joker would be rightly afraid of that, and Bruce himself would be afraid of his own need to do just that, and it'd be a constant push and pull. That's basically what I think it'd be like for a while, before Joker figured out who exactly he's comfortable being, and if he can trust Bruce to still be there when boundaries are being pushed. It'd be a lot of "make me" even in the context of intimacy, until Joker initiates something that doesn't hurt on his own and like... Bruce doesn't move a muscle as if he might spook a wild animal or something. And then Joker snaps at him to stop making it weird, hah.

I'm going to stop here to avoid turning this into a Batjokes relationship essay, but I hope this helped inspire you, Anon! We can always use more Batjokes stories, excited to eventually read yours.

[undermounts]

I've only just come across your fic and haven't had the free time to start reading it yet, so I hope what I'm asking isn't answered in the fic itself whoops. >,< But I would love to know what the general inspiration for it was! Did you have any parts of the plot you had to really sit down and think about or did all of the pieces just fall into place like a miracle? How did you decide the number of years in the timeskip? Thanks for answering!

hello! and no worries, these are crazy and busy times.

Basically, what got me started was I was imagining what it would be like if Diana and Gaius were in Europe together on some quest after seeing the bonus scene at the end of bb3. I always wanted them to have that psychic bond (hopefully that’s not too big of a spoiler) because i’m such a sucker for that trope when the pairing has a deeper connection that’s so intimate they don’t even need to speak aloud, they just get each other.

All of that inspired one scene that I just loved so much (it happens in the middle of chapter 13) I decided needed to develop how I thought they would get to that point (ex: why Diana is alone in Europe with him, how the bond formed, how they moved past their brutal history together, etc). So I just started imagining more and more until I basically gave in and started writing! 

When I wrote the first few chapters, the only thing I really had set in stone was the search for artifacts, their bond, and the scene in ch 13. It wasn’t until around chapter 4 that I really had to stop and plan out the plot and give a reason for the things they were doing. I remember how stressed I was for like a solid 2 hours because I felt like my endgame was too ambitious and there were too many working pieces. I even planned out a secondary ending because I was so freaked out by everything I wanted to do, but ultimately, I abandoned it and decided that I was all in. 

So around chapter 4-5 I had the general outline of what I wanted to do and even thought of a couple specific scenes I knew I had to include. As I write more chapters, the plot obviously gets more fleshed out and it’s nice that some pieces fall into place. But for the most part, a lot of planning went into this. You’ll see a lot of elements introduced in the first few chapters that come back later on.

As for the time jump, I wanted to make sure enough time had passed for all of the characters to reasonably grow a bit out of the happy ending we saw at the end of bb3. I needed to give Gaius a bit of time to really process everything that’s happened and be at that point where he no longer believes that he has nothing to live for but that he has also accepted and fully believes he has a lot to atone for. 

It was very important to me that I made sure at the beginning of the story, he knows he is in the wrong, wants to fix it, and doesn’t fully believe that he is worthy of his second chance. The reason for this is that I feel like it mirrors the general opinion of his character. I didn’t want to be too forgiving or merciful on him and I wanted him to have to work himself out of this hole on and really deserve redemption first. I thought Gaius was one of the most intriguing and layered characters pb has ever written, so I want to do his arc justice.

It’s my biggest hope that people see that Bound isn’t just a love story between Gaius and Diana, which I know discourages and repulses a lot of people. At its core, Bound a redemption story about a complex character and my version of BB4.

The reason I specifically picked 2042 as the year the story was set in is for world-building purposes. Twenty years was long enough for some off-screen development, but not too long that the world is so technologically advanced and different from what we know today. 

Technology isn’t a big part of the story because I felt that it would make things too easy and create too many plots (ex: this problem easily could have been solved via advanced tech that should have been developed by X amount of time). It felt like trying to create a completely different world would have been a bit too ambitious for me, especially since traveling is a big element in the narrative. Evolving technology in different cultures? Gonna have to put a pin in that one for now. 

Anyway, I hope that answered your questions! I really loved answering this and hope you enjoy the story when you have time!!!