anhappy

[anhappy]

So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember… there’s always madness. Madness is the emergency exit…

From Arkham Origins & The Killing Joke joker: GIFs | comics | arkham games | tags

[anhappy]

[anhappy]

[anhappy]

I love your metas! I was wondering... have you or anyone else tried listing all of Bruce's childhood traumas? Comics zero in on Crime Alley, but EVERY time I see a snippet from his childhood it's invariably a little-to-a-lot fucked up whether his parents are involved (loneliness, bedtime stories, his mom lovingly promising to haunt him) or not (falling into the cave, going to a boarding school run by a killer in Batman Gothic, Tommy Elliott in general, a childhood friend died of diphtheria in Batman Through the Looking Glass... he saw a LOT of death as a child, actually...)

Thank you! I unfortunately don't know of a post listing all of Bruce's childhood traumas. You've kind of already covered a lot of bases, Anon, but for the sake of completeness I'll go through all you've mentioned and the traumatic incidents I can recall too:

Bruce falls into a well full of bats and develops a phobia in response [notable post-Crisis flashback in Batman: The Man Who Falls]

At five years old, Bruce's favorite story to have Thomas read to him every night for a month is “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, which is largely about kids with such neglectful parents that they bond with an automated house and then leave their parents for dead [mentioned by Bruce(s) in Batman/Superman (2013) #2]

Bruce witnessed his father performing surgery on a dying man [flashback in Batman: The Long Halloween]

Thomas reads to Bruce “The Animals and the Pit” by Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev, a story containing cannibalism and brutal fights for survival [flashback in Batman (2016) #74]

Thomas had Bruce watch horror movies with him, with Martha having to comfort Bruce afterwards in a bit of an unorthodox way... by promising that if they died, his parents would haunt him [flashback in Detective Comics (2016) #1027 -- Ghost Story]

Bruce experienced neglect as a child, with his father's parenting style being potrayed in multiple stories as authoritarian, which led to Bruce idolizing him and craving his approval, but running to Martha for comfort when his father was too harsh [notable flashbacks in Batman: The Dark Knight II (2011) #12, but bits of this can be seen in Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: Hush, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #58, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth etc.]

Bruce had a friend called Celia Small for a while, whom he adored. He watched her die of diptheria while he recovered, blaming himself for it [mentioned in Batman: Through the Looking Glass]

Bruce was sent to a private school as a child, which he resented as being "sent away"; the school is described as hell, a place where children were beaten, humiliated and had to fight off the sexual advances of older teachers. Bruce gets spanked as physical punishment by the headmaster, who turns out to be a serial killer, because Bruce glimpses the severed head of his only friend Robert as it happens [flashbacks in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #7 -- Gothic]

Bruce accidentally shoots a duck with a rifle his friend Mooley had brought with them, and the death of the animal becomes a traumatic memory associated with the death of his parents, because of the gun [Batman: Secrets #4]

Bruce's childhood friend, Tommy Elliot... um. I guess I can just list Tommy Elliot, but the most direct traumatic experience at the time must've been having to stop Thomas from killing another kid, after which Thomas was put in a psychiatric institution [flashback in Detective Comics (1937) #837]

Bruce's father hits him while angry about a stock investment, with Bruce declaring in childish rage to his mother afterwards that he wants him dead... on the same day that his parents got gunned down, because Bruce's survivor's guilt needed more ammunition [flashback in Batman (1940) #430]

And then there's the shooting of his parents at the tender age of 8 years old! So all of this is prior to that! Two dead friends, one who avoided him after the unfortunate duck incident, and one friend who had a violent breakdown and got taken away... And Bruce attempted suicide after his parents died too, as told in Batman (2016) #12.

[anhappy]

I love your metas! I was wondering... have you or anyone else tried listing all of Bruce's childhood traumas? Comics zero in on Crime Alley, but EVERY time I see a snippet from his childhood it's invariably a little-to-a-lot fucked up whether his parents are involved (loneliness, bedtime stories, his mom lovingly promising to haunt him) or not (falling into the cave, going to a boarding school run by a killer in Batman Gothic, Tommy Elliott in general, a childhood friend died of diphtheria in Batman Through the Looking Glass... he saw a LOT of death as a child, actually...)

Thank you! I unfortunately don't know of a post listing all of Bruce's childhood traumas. You've kind of already covered a lot of bases, Anon, but for the sake of completeness I'll go through all you've mentioned and the traumatic incidents I can recall too:

Bruce falls into a well full of bats and develops a phobia in response [notable post-Crisis flashback in Batman: The Man Who Falls]

At five years old, Bruce's favorite story to have Thomas read to him every night for a month is “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, which is largely about kids with such neglectful parents that they bond with an automated house and then leave their parents for dead [mentioned by Bruce(s) in Batman/Superman (2013) #2]

Bruce witnessed his father performing surgery on a dying man [flashback in Batman: The Long Halloween]

Thomas reads to Bruce “The Animals and the Pit” by Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev, a story containing cannibalism and brutal fights for survival [flashback in Batman (2016) #74]

Thomas had Bruce watch horror movies with him, with Martha having to comfort Bruce afterwards in a bit of an unorthodox way... by promising that if they died, his parents would haunt him [flashback in Detective Comics (2016) #1027 -- Ghost Story]

Bruce experienced neglect as a child, with his father's parenting style being potrayed in multiple stories as authoritarian, which led to Bruce idolizing him and craving his approval, but running to Martha for comfort when his father was too harsh [notable flashbacks in Batman: The Dark Knight II (2011) #12, but bits of this can be seen in Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: Hush, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #58, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth etc.]

Bruce had a friend called Celia Small for a while, whom he adored. He watched her die of diptheria while he recovered, blaming himself for it [mentioned in Batman: Through the Looking Glass]

Bruce was sent to a private school as a child, which he resented as being "sent away"; the school is described as hell, a place where children were beaten, humiliated and had to fight off the sexual advances of older teachers. Bruce gets spanked as physical punishment by the headmaster, who turns out to be a serial killer, because Bruce glimpses the severed head of his only friend Robert as it happens [flashbacks in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #7 -- Gothic]

Bruce accidentally shoots a duck with a rifle his friend Mooley had brought with them, and the death of the animal becomes a traumatic memory associated with the death of his parents, because of the gun [Batman: Secrets #4]

Bruce's childhood friend, Tommy Elliot... um. I guess I can just list Tommy Elliot, but the most direct traumatic experience at the time must've been having to stop Thomas from killing another kid, after which Thomas was put in a psychiatric institution [flashback in Detective Comics (1937) #837]

Bruce's father hits him while angry about a stock investment, with Bruce declaring in childish rage to his mother afterwards that he wants him dead... on the same day that his parents got gunned down, because Bruce's survivor's guilt needed more ammunition [flashback in Batman (1940) #430]

And then there's the shooting of his parents at the tender age of 8 years old! So all of this is prior to that! Two dead friends, one who avoided him after the unfortunate duck incident, and one friend who had a violent breakdown and got taken away... And Bruce attempted suicide after his parents died too, as told in Batman (2016) #12.

[anhappy]

[anhappy]

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

[anhappy]

why haven't they banned Joker from Gotham?

bestie do you think being banned would actually like. stop him. he already breaks laws, what's a ban gonna do?

[anhappy]

Anne Carson (2009)

Arthur S. Way (1898)

George Theodoridis (2010)

Ian C. Johnston (2010)

E.P. Coleridge (1910)

Theodore Alois Buckley (1892)

John Peck, Frank Nisetich (1995)

R. Potter (1906)

M. L. West (1987)

William Arrowsmith (1958)

Philip Vellacott (1972)

Michael Wodhull (1782)

Kenneth McLeish (1997)

David Kovacs (2002)

Andrew Wilson (1993)

Euripides - Original (408 BCE)

[anhappy]

I love your Batman meta related posts, and I enjoy reading through them. I’ve noticed that a common theme in some of them revolve around Bruce being an abusive parent. I’m sorry if this is too much to ask, but may you please go over some examples of Bruce being abusive to the batfam, and how it’s not an OOC characterization for him?

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy my occasional Batman thoughts. Indeed, I've expressed more than once that I do believe Bruce is an abusive parent -- though I feel like others before me have articulated the reasons for it far better. Which is why I will offer some of my opinions below, but I will also redirect you to a couple of metas on this topic I myself agreed with and found interesting, which contain examples of Bruce being abusive (with comic receipts a lot of the time): here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here... look, pretty much go through the “Batman’s C+ parenting” tag of bitimdrake’s blog :)) Many bingeable good metas to read.

I think it's very important to note that abuse is a heavy and complicated topic. People perceive and deal with abuse very differently; and people become abusers in different ways. You can certainly encounter individuals who maliciously and intentionally use their power or privilege to abuse others, but more often than not it's not that simple. It's not that black and white. Sometimes, a parent might genuinely love their child, but they might have no idea how to express themselves healthily or raise them, and they might end up doing a lot of emotional damage to their child because of it. And in my opinion, Bruce falls in the second category. He doesn't intend to harm his children, emotionally or physically -- but he ends up doing it nonetheless, again and again. That’s not to say Bruce can’t be a good parent. He has been; he’s supported the Family, he’s praised them, he’s shown them he cares, and I’m pretty sure he’d die for them if he needed to. And that’s the most interesting part: he’s a realistic parent with abusive tendencies. He’s human. He’s fallible. He loves his children and he tries his best, and he’s learned a lot over time; but he also makes a lot of mistakes.

I’ll go into more detail on each type of abusive behavior he displays (so warning for that), and why I don’t consider it OOC, under the cut. Because I was like ‘haha I’ll just link some metas’ but then I got long again. Sigh.

It's a joke that's made a lot, how Batman is supposed to be a loner, and yet he has one of the most extensive Families and ally circles in DC. But once you get to know the character, it's not at all a contradiction. Bruce lost his family, and that trauma shaped him. It's the basis of Batman. It makes perfect sense that he'd yearn to create one of his own... but the problem is, his desire for connection is many times outweighed by his absolute, paralyzing fear of it. If he has a family, if he has people he cares about, then he can lose them. Bruce is terrified of loss, and this fear is one of the main roots of his pattern of emotional abuse.

This pattern tends to manifest in three forms. The first is neglect. He distances himself from his children, treats them as soldiers in his neverending war on crime, keeps them at arms length -- both because he wants it to hurt less if he loses them, and because he's never developed a healthy way of dealing with his own or others' emotions. In many ways, it's self-preservation, and not just towards the Family. In general, Bruce's repression, intellectualization, and emotional distancing is a way to avoid being hurt. This drives his belief that emotional attachments are, in the end, a weakness. He can't focus on the Mission if he's constantly worried about the people fighting alongside him... but he also needs them. And here one of Bruce's darker traits come in, too: his ruthlessness. He can't be everywhere all at once, he can't operate alone and be as efficient as when having a small army of trained soldiers at his side. For the sake of the Mission being fulfilled, and with the goal of protecting Gotham and saving as many people as possible, he allows the Batfamily to exist. Bruce is capable of 'turning off' his emotions and only acting in the interest of a higher goal, in a way that's hurt and pissed off his friends and Family multiple times. I'm not at all saying he doesn't love them, or care about them. That's the crux of the matter. He does care, and he's afraid of what happens when he cares, which again and again prompts him to act cold and distant and emotionally push them away. But, ironically enough, it's this exact same issue that leads him to display the third kind of emotionally abusive behavior: excessive control.

Bruce has been shown to be invasive and manipulative, wanting the Family to follow his orders and punishing them in various ways when they don’t -- because, if you're terrified of losing something, one way to ensure you're not going to lose it is to contain it, and never take your eyes off it. Carefully control it. See, he can't entirely cut all ties, both because he loves the Family and because he needs them from a utilitarian point of view. But he can try to emotionally protect himself by distancing, and he can try to protect them by controlling them... by knowing everything that goes on in their lives, and (sadly) trying to get them to make choices he would make. He’s got a bit of a thing when it comes to rewarding the Family for acting the same way he does. It’s a complicated mix of Bruce’s arrogance, God complex and that controlling overprotective streak I mentioned; it’s ‘I think of every worst-case scenario and prepare for everything and train for everything and essentially try to become God, so if you act the same way I do, you will be safer and less likely to get hurt.’

The third form of his emotionally abusive pattern is the expectation for others to prioritize and handle his emotions. This pretty much follows the other two kinds; Bruce does say very hurtful things, he pushes people away, he keeps secrets and refuses to ask for help or include his children in intimate aspects of his life; but he also expects them to not let him do it, and it's... this one is really tough. I don't think it's ever quite hit him, the realization of his egocentrism: the way he makes so many things about himself. His emotions and his state of being are the priority, for his kids, and they always watch out for Bruce's anger, for his self-destructive tendencies, for signs of him retreating so they can pull him back from the brink, and the thing is, that's not their job. The kid is not supposed to take care of the parent, it's supposed to be the other way around. But more often than not, it's not Bruce handling his childrens' emotions, it's them navigating his. Dick and Tim, especially, are subject to this. Hell, Tim basically became Robin because he saw how Bruce was spiralling and went 'is no one gonna take care of that??', stepping into the role himself when Dick refused to (and good for him). And thing is, while a huge part of why Bruce adopted and trained them is empathizing with their traumas and caring about them, another part of it is... a need for grounding himself. Bruce knows he's always walking the line. He knows he's got a lot of darkness that he's always fighting to keep contained, and he can't manage it alone. He keeps himself human through his connections, his attachments; his Family, most of all. And so, it's not surprising that his children end up having to chase Bruce and figure out his emotions and take care of him, make him socialize and act like a person -- it's part of why Bruce forged these relationships in the first place. But it's still not fair to any of them. And it's impacted them in various unhealthy ways. There's certainly an argument to be made that some of them began to base their value, and self-worth, in how useful they were to Bruce. Bruce's approval is something that's so deeply craved in the core Family circle, and it's... sigh. It's downright insidious, sometimes. Bruce does so many shitty things, but they keep coming back, often at token signs of apology from Bruce or barely any crumbs at all.

And if it were only that. But Bruce's grief and his fear of loss always turn to anger. Batman is fueled by that anger, and Bruce has... lots of issues in dealing with it and venting it in a healthy way (see the above general issues in handling his own emotions). And so, you have the pattern of physical abuse, and not just the emotional I described above. In his grief and his anger, Bruce has exploded and hit his children more than once. It's tough to say who suffered more from this: Dick or Jason. Maybe Jason, since Bruce's tremendous amount of guilt and self-hatred towards him just turns into more anger, and that translates into even more potential violence. Especially when Jason breaches Bruce's rules. He gets very angry when anyone breaches his imposed rules, especially the no-killing one, and here’s where his harmful need for absolute control and some of that arrogance come in. Bruce justifies this kind of behavior in various ways (and the narrative does too, because it has to -- Batman has to be the hero), the most prevalent excuse being his treatment of them as soldiers, or a downright refusal to admit he’s even viewed as a father figure by them. This is an overarching issue in itself, his reluctance to admit he’s wrong.

In the end, so much of this has roots in Bruce’s trauma, which is the main reason why I don’t see it as OOC. He tries to save everyone because he couldn’t save his parents back then. He’s so controlling because he cannot even conceive of ever being that helpless again; he’s terrified of losing the people he cares about and still so incandescently angry at the criminals that took them away. Needless to say, he’s plenty neurodivergent, too. And disappearing for over a decade and training for being Batman, being away from Alfred and having his parents taken away at such a young age... never afforded him the opportunity to learn healthy ways of emotionally regulating himself. Neither did it teach him to reach out to others in a healthy way. And all the resulting issues, that he’s never truly dealt with constructively, converge in all the ways Bruce has fallen into abusive behaviors as a parental figure.

Hope you’ve found this an interesting read! I tried to keep it as general as possible, seeing as the metas before I’ve linked are a lot more specific. I also want to assert that this is my personal assessment of Bruce’s character, and that (obviously) everyone is free to create their own interpretation; I take no issue with people who prefer to headcanon and write Bruce solely as a good parent. But the canon reality of him not being one does exist, and is still interesting to dissect.

[anhappy]

do you think that if batman killed someone (NOT joker), would joker still love batman? would he still see batman as his opposite and equal or would his obssession come to an end?

Thing is... Batman might not have killed anyone with his own hands in main continuity yet, but he's certainly allowed people to be put into situations where they might die. He's definitely had the intent to let someone die or to cause someone's death, and he has canonically, accidentally killed people. Joker has been there to witness some of these times, or even has been the recipient of them. But leaving that aside, Joker has already seen what a Batman who's gone dark looks like in The Batman Who Laughs, and his reaction to that is the most telling.

I got long about this, obviously. Bruce's no-killing compulsion is complicated and I like ranting about it, so I'm putting the rest of my answer under the cut.

There are multiple moments in which Bruce has allowed for death to happen. For example, Batman #420 has him famously let KGBeast die (this is retconned later by Bruce telling Dick he did call the Police, but Dick still calls him out on it being an afterthought -- his first intention had been to let KGBeast die). Batman #613 has Bruce accidentally push two thugs into a meat grinder, something he's clearly very distraught about; but it's not something that stops him from being Batman. Batman: Run, Riddler, Run has him believe he killed someone on accident, and... he doesn't seem terribly peeved about it, though it does shake him a little. Final Crisis #6 has him shoot Darkseid with a gun intending to kill (and you know what, All-Star Batman and Robin doesn't exist, what do you mean??). Hell, Bruce allows for the possibility of Joker's death alone on three separate occasions: in Death in the Family when he lets Joker crash with the helicopter, in No Man's Land when he steps aside and allows Gordon to shoot him, and at the end of Joker War when he walks away while Joker is strapped to a bomb. Granted, all these times Bruce either thought Joker would survive, trusted Gordon was too good to shoot, and was sure Joker had the tools to disarm the bomb -- but it's still a risk, Joker could have died. Arguably, in Batman: Endgame Bruce even kills himself and Joker directly! He stops Joker from healing and keeps him with him until the caves collapse on their heads.

Even more telling, in Batman: Gotham Knights #74, Bruce actually leaves Hush behind with Joker, knowing full well he might get killed; this is pretty much all spelled out. And obviously, Joker doesn't lose respect for Batman, or have his obsession diminish afterwards. Not after this, not after the times Bruce didn't save him, not even after the time Bruce technically, genuinelly killed him.

Bruce's no-killing rule is... very complicated. Enough that books on ethics and morality have been written about it. But at its core, it's not about morality, it's about emotion. Bruce came up with it as a result of trauma, not as a result of philosophizing and ethical debate. Intentionally and selfishly killing a criminal is the line he draws in the sand, to keep his darkness at bay. Which is why the times he's come close to it are times he can justify: if it was accidental, if it was the only choice to save the Universe, if he didn't commit the act himself (like with Hush, or KGBeast, or Joker).

But if he snaps someone's neck himself, kills someone for no other reason than his own need for it (fear and anger, which for Bruce are pretty much interchangeable), that goes against the Vow. That ends Batman, because it turns Batman into Someone Like Him, the man who killed his parents; and we basically have proof of this with the premise of Batman Beyond. Bruce doesn't even genuinely kill someone in that Universe, but the fact he took a gun in his hand and considered doing it out of fear, selfishly... it destroys Batman. More importantly though, we have proof of this with The War of Jokes and Riddles, and the time he nearly stabbed Riddler out of anger, but Joker stopped him. Joker knew letting him do it like this would undo Batman, and he needed Batman to keep existing. That's why Bruce tells Selina later, "What separates me from them... is a hand on a knife. His hand."

So, knowing all this, to finally answer your question... Joker knows that Batman has allowed for his rule to bend. He's been there for a lot of those times (I didn't even mention Batman: Hush, the time Jim Gordon had to be the hand on the knife, the person to stop Bruce from going over the edge). But clearly, it hasn't affected Joker's love, or his obsession -- because he shares the belief that these times don't count. But what he does think counts, is The Batman Who Laughs (TBWL).

TBWL perfectly embodies a Bruce who's properly gone dark. He does not kill accidentally or for the greater good. He razes worlds to the ground out of fear, anger, a desire to win; he represents Batman's need for control brought to paroxysm. He's a Batman who's crossed the line. And Joker canonically, genuinely hates him. He calls TBWL an abomination, and he teams up with Bruce to take him down in Dark Nights: Metal #6. Moreso, in Snyder's Elseworld Batman ending, The Last Knight on Earth, Joker does not consider the Bruce who's become Omega and a ruthless killer a Batman anymore. So... if Bruce intentionally killed someone else, out of anger and hatred, I do think Joker would feel betrayed. He wouldn't be able to recognize him anymore, and would likely try to kill Bruce for real (in some grand murder-suicide kind of gesture). If Batman stops being Batman, in whatever capacity, Joker's life loses meaning. But more than that, I think part of trying to kill this Bruce who’s lost himself would be the love. Joker would be trying to put Batman out of his misery, stop him from being the thing he hates most. After all, in The Batman Who Laughs comic, Bruce himself asks Joker to kill him if he became that monster. And Joker very readily agrees, and is the one to shoot Bruce in the end, snapping him out of it. Keeping Bruce from going over the edge.

Joker, the hand on the knife. It’s all so... [incoherent garbled noises].

Oof, this got long! I went into too much detail, perhaps, but I still hope you had fun reading this. Thank you for the ask, anon!

[anhappy]

Why did batman save joker's life numerous times? Yes he also left him to "die", but he did so knowing that he would survive, and yet it seems nonsensical to save joker when it would almost free the world from a lot of suffering, he could simply actually leave the joker to be killed but he refuses to. Its actually very funny, what is batman excuse to THAT?

In all fairness, Batman has saved the lives of the other Rogues too, when he could've just let them die -- though indeed none as frequent as Joker. There are many examples of it, ranging from low-level thugs (e.g., Batman: Shadow of the Bat #30) in the employ of more major Gotham villains, to the A-listers themselves. Bruce has saved Riddler's life (e.g., Batman Confidential: #26-28), he's saved Freeze's life (e.g., Detective Comics #1013), Catwoman's (obviously; e.g., Batman: Heart of Hush), Scarecrow's (e.g., Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #141), Black Mask's (e.g., Batman #519)... and so on.

So, what exactly makes Joker different? I'll put my explanation under the cut, for the health of everyone's dash, as always.

As we all know, Bruce has a sacred pattern. If someone is in direct danger of dying, he saves them. It does not matter who it is, criminal or innocent. It's an emotional compulsion rather than an ethical choice: when Bruce saves someone, he's saving his parents, in all the ways he was too weak to as a child. However, life is never that simple. When Bruce has to save criminals he despises, he expresses how much he hates that he does it; except that his need to save life, to overwrite the trauma of his childhood, is bigger than the hatred he holds for all evildoers. (Though not always. As I mentioned in my previous answer going over Bruce's no-killing rule, certain circumstances can stifle his need to save just enough for him to leave someone in mortal danger -- but there have to be enough degrees of separation so he can justify it.)

So, him saving Joker's life, no matter the circumstances, is genuinely driven by his no-killing rule and his core compulsion to save people. It's not just an excuse. Joker knows this... Hell, everyone knows this. It's something many villains take advantage of in their fights with Batman. Make him choose between chasing the perpetrator and saving an innocent life, and bam; he saves the innocent life, you get the time to escape.

But is Joker just part of the pattern? Is it just unfortunate that Joker's life needed to be saved so many times? Aaaaand... here's where the funny (tragic?) part comes in, because obviously, the answer is no. It's one thing that Bruce refuses to let anyone die, it's one thing that he's saved Joker more times and more passionately than anyone else -- but the thing is, he's saved Joker to the detriment of innocents. And this is where his no-killing rule becomes an excuse, as you call it, rather than the truth.

The Joker: Devil's Advocate has Joker condemned to death by law, but because it's for the one crime he didn't commit, Bruce goes nuts trying to save Joker's life.

It's a flimsy excuse, because Bruce breaks laws left and right, by his own admission; it's always about justice, not the rules. And yet now the law matters? Bruce very well knows Joker is guilty. He might not have committed this crime, but he's done all the others before it, and he deserves to die for those ten times over. Why not let justice follow its course, when so many innocent lives would be saved by having Joker gone (not to mention how many avenged)? You can't even argue it's about Bruce's compulsion to save lives, because I don't remember him trying to save every single criminal put on death row.

Interestingly enough, Bruce then justifies it differently towards Alfred and Tim:

Huh. You mean that you can't let Joker take the fall for this crime first, and then use the evidence you collect because you 'loathe mysteries' so much (a valiant effort on Alfred's part to justify Bruce's behavior, tbh) after, to bring the real killer in? It's not even like he'd have to wait long...

So, Bruce can't let Joker die for a crime he didn't commit because it's against the law. Then, he can't let Joker die because it allows for the real criminal to go free, and that would kill innocents. But also, his detective mind just craves solving the case so badly, and that's the reason he's doing this.

First excuse was dismantled by Gordon himself. Second excuse still does not explain why he's so urgently trying to solve the case, before Joker's death day comes around. Third excuse explains it even less, because he can just solve the case, sate his curiosity, save the innocent lives and stop the criminal-- and not hand in the evidence to save Joker's life. Just hand it in a minute later!

And here we have the fourth excuse, which actually goes against what he told Gordon. Bruce tells Joker himself that it's about justice. All different reasons, and some of them contradicting each other! But finally, the narrative directly calls him out on simply caring, where before we get comments from other characters ("I have never seen him look so... grim," says Tim. "He hasn't slept in days," says Tim.)

It truly is quite funny to me how all of Bruce's justifications don't manage to explain how desperate he is to beat the clock, don't manage to cover up the fact he's solving the case to save Joker's life; not to protect innocents, not to abide the law, not to sate his detective instincts. And if there's still any shred of doubt that Bruce is doing this for utterly selfish reasons, this is what Bruce does after he manages to get Joker pardoned literally seconds before he gets fried in the electric chair:

The comic is full of Joker's victims advocating for him dying! Full of people asserting how Joker deserves to die, because of the people he's killed, and because of how many people will die if he keeps living. And yet, after all of that, Bruce goes to Joker's cell to brag to him that he owes his life to Batman. Unhinged! Unhinged, your honor! You can't really explain Bruce in this comic in a way that makes sense without admitting that Bruce is personally invested in Joker, and that's that.

Which leads me to the most bonkers example of him choosing Joker over someone else... Batman: Under the Red Hood.

(Fucking hell, Bruce. At least go to Jason and try to help stop the bleeding.)

Just for comparison's sake. Here's Bruce stepping away and allowing for Jim Gordon to potentially kill Joker after he murdered Sarah Essen-Gordon, but then Jim shoots him in the leg (Detective Comics #741):

What is the difference between these two instances? Why didn't Bruce let Jason shoot Joker -- arguably, someone much closer to him, someone who's like a son to him, someone who Joker killed?

It's because Jason would've shot Joker for sure. When it comes to Jim, Bruce trusts that he has the same code as himself; even in The Killing Joke, after Joker crippled his daughter, Jim told Bruce that he wanted everything done "by the book." Bruce knew that in letting Jim point a gun at Joker, the risk to his life was unlikely. However, none of this applies to Jason. Jason would have 100% pulled the trigger. It's the same as Devil's Advocate; Joker's death was a certainty, not a risk or a possibility. And in those circumstances, Bruce chooses Joker in spite of everything else. He endangers the life of his adopted son by slitting his throat (actually, it's more or less canon he actually killed Jason) to save the life of the man who murdered him. (...Look. I ship Batjokes, but I also like the Batfam and Jason especially, and this makes me feel so bad for him it's insane. Sometimes I think about RHatO #25 and Batman & Robin #20 and really wish I could punch Bruce in the face. I say this as a Bruce fan.)

And here you have it, anon. Yes, it is nonsensical for Bruce to keep saving Joker, especially within this specific set of circumstances, and especially because of how many lives are lost because of it. It's nonsensical because, underneath the surface of the no-killing rule, it's due to selfish emotional attachment. Like I said elsewhere, Bruce is just as obsessed with Joker-- he's just better at hiding it.

[anhappy]

every sleep token song is applicable to batjokes 2/?

songs in order : Nazareth / Granite / Atlantic / Sugar / The Apparition

media in order : Joker : Killer Smile / Batman #49 / Batman : The Killing Joke / The Joker (Earth-43) / The Batman Who Laughs Issue #3

part 1

[anhappy]

[…] I try to be honest. And what is revealed is often rather hideously unflattering

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath ⁠— July 1950 - July 1953

[anhappy]

sleep

watercolour on arches paper

[anhappy]

[anhappy]

Do you believe in love at first sight?