#Batjokes meta

[psalmsofpsychosis]

You know, i've been thinking about the way Batman keeps danger and weapons so close to his body, so tight to himself, practically tied around his neck, that joker often has no way left but to grab for him if he wants something Batman has. Batman does not want to be left out of Joker's plans, his story, he wants in on Joker's narrative by any means he can make it happen. It's such particular "you take me with you wherever you are, it's your punishment, just as it's my punishment to take you with me wherever i am" statement. Batman actively leaves no choice for Joker but to get very very close to him and claim him as part of his win or his loss. I mean,

he didn't have to. he could've put the key in one of his waist pouches, push it into the back of his left boot, he could've tied it around his bicep, i dont care— he could've done whateverthefuck with it. But he had to put it around his neck, and intentionally invite Joker to "come and get it". Something something classic cliche of the way lovers' bond is signified by a necklace-adjacent item and the way they interact with it; hold unto it, toss it, tie it around their necks, giving it back, not giving it back, necklaces as items of reverance and revenge. Something something a tie around neck being a sign of being claimed and owned,

[distort-opia]

Top 10 gayest things batman has uttered about the joker?

It’s been really difficult to rank them, let me tell you; but I hope you enjoy, anon. Without further ado, here’s my top 10 gayest things Bruce has either thought/uttered about Joker, or said to Joker directly:

1. “I want him so bad, my body would shake if I let it--”

-- Detective Comics (1937) #617

2. “And when you’re sitting here alone, in the middle of the night... unsleeping in the dark, remember... every breath you take you owe to me.”

-- Joker: Devil’s Advocate (1996)

3. “I’m afraid you’re too late! The Joker’s been mine for quite some time.”

-- Legends of the DC Universe (1940) #27

4. “I never thought it would end like this. Him. Me. Our blood, on each other’s lips.”

-- Batman: Europa (2016) #1

5. “He was here. [...] Even without the green hairs on the carpet... the red lipstick stain on the couch... I can smell him.”

-- Batman/Catwoman (2021) #7

6. “Your name. Your history. Your family. All of it. Here. I’ll whisper it to you... whisper it right into your ear, darling.”

-- Batman: Death of the Family (2013)

7. “But me, Joker. I’m dying. I’ll be dead from my injuries in minutes. So... won’t you stay with me? Stay with me and forgive me. Forgive me for being so blind.”

-- Batman: Endgame (2015)

8. “What separates me from them... is a hand on a knife. His hand. [...] I'm just what he made me.”

-- Batman (2016) #32 (The War of Jokes and Riddles)

9. “From the beginning, I knew. There's nothing wrong with you... that I can't fix... with my hands.”

-- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986)

10. “This has always been about us. Why did you do this to him?”

-- Injustice: Gods Among Us -- Year 1 #4

Edit: Now with Part 2!

[f0gman]

Hi *taps mic*

I’m gonna try to debunk the theory I hear often of “maybe batjokes is canon, but it’s only a toxic, twisted, obsessive version of love that Joker is doomed to and Batman has to overcome”

Of course, it’s all up to interpretation and no one’s opinion has the final say, but as a (cough, cough, hopeless romantic) gay guy, I think they have much more than that! I’ll explain.

1. Joker’s love isn’t perversion, but vulnerability

Most are accustomed to seeing the Joker’s infatuation as creepy. While that’s not unreasonable as he’s suggestive and clingy amidst Batman’s discomfort, he doesn’t seem to expect anything to come of it. It’s his way of coping with strong feelings that’ll never be reciprocated; he knows they won’t be acknowledged. 

And he doesn’t seek to violate Bruce, but rather to accept violence as a way to satisfy his needs. Yes, it’s masochistic, but it’s also consensual. He enjoys the feeling of being vulnerable; he sees it not as defeat, but intimacy, and he knows Batman finds some satisfaction in it. If he didn’t, there wouldn’t always be hand-to-hand combat. He could knock him out quickly or shoot him with a tranquilizer, but instead he gives Joker exactly what he wants and receives the same in return.

It's often about stimulation when them: two unlike people with core similarities trying to best each other. Without the dire circumstances (due to Joker's crime) in early Batman content, their fighting was much more like sparring.

Secondly, given that love is not Joker’s choice, admitting his feelings is not a ploy to make him more intimidating or powerful. It’s his weakness. The way Batman treats him directly affects his emotions and everything, really. He’s distraught if Batman’s absent for even a day when he expects him to come.

Plus, in love is one of the most vulnerable things he can be. Pure obsession doesn't demand understanding and empathy out of your enemy. It wouldn’t wonder for decades what made him as broken as you. It wouldn’t long to see him with his defenses down, for once not shutting everything out.

For Batman, it wouldn’t amount to hours upon hours of trying to understand and trying to find out why his enemy is broken, as if there's a missing piece to making him better. It wouldn't care about his humanity.

A part of me thinks that Joker wants to believe it’s nothing more than an obsession. It scares him to think of Batman being unmasked—to see his human side. It would break the fantasy where he keeps his feelings...yet he knows they’re obvious and admits to them.

I don’t think he would claim it to be love if it weren’t true. It only awards Batman more homophobic praise when he beats someone who has “no right” to be attracted to him. It doesn’t make Joker more impressive in any way, maybe more repulsive to some, but it won’t further any of his goals.

At the end of the day, he grieves over him. Even while getting everything he wants in a fight, he truly wants Batman to love him. So much so that Harley,  behind her rose-tinted Joker glass knows it.

“He doesn’t love me. He only loves Batman.”

He’s driven crazy by it. But it isn’t love itself that makes him crazy. Joker, like Batman, is broken from trauma, and he finds understanding and excitement in someone else—the only one so far. Even a sense of solace, which is the hardest to come by. If you ask me, Joker being able to love is a human, redeeming quality.

2. Batman’s love isn’t inhumane, but empathetic

Batman is notorious for blocking people out. He’s the “master of fear” and treats his brain as if it’s a steel trap (constantly pushing himself to his limit). The fact is, he’s not sane in the way most people are; his trauma affects every part of him, and he realizes Joker is the same way. He obsesses over why. He wants to know what made him, what can change him, and what their relationship will become.

He sees someone that’s like him, yet Joker defies everything he believes as a person. It’s beyond frustrating and is the exact thing that keeps them trapped in the cycle. He takes his frustrations out in violence because Joker just won’t change.

I imagine the frustration would have started the moment he saw a glimpse at his human side. He saw him as someone just as messed up as he is, yet set apart because of what he does. Worst of all, he knows Joker wants him. At any moment, Bruce could have him, making it that much harder for him to fight and keep his morals. It makes him angrier.

But to end the toxicity, someone has to give.

Batman made this first step in The Killing Joke. He “came out” in a way. Between his denial to loving him and Joker’s fear to change, they were doomed to kill each other off in the end. Both resorted to violence to cope with their attraction and frustration, but acknowledging this was his first step toward ending the cycle. Not only that, but he wants a good relationship with Joker. He isn’t giving up on him, but changing the fight’s trajectory. He offers Joker rehabilitation to bridge the gap between them. Very possibly, that included rehabilitation for himself.

“You don’t need to be alone...we don’t have to kill each other. Let me help you.”

He says, “let me help you”, promising directly that he will stay by Joker’s side. He realizes that he’s likely the only one that can change him. He accepted this when he accepted their relationship, and despite everything Joker’s done, he put him before everyone else. There’d be no other reason to put him above Barbara, Gordon, or anyone in the bat family. If it was only about obsession and some perverted version of love, he wouldn’t have let his guard down to speak to Joker man-to-man. He extends his hand out of empathy.

“Maybe I’ve been there too."

In that moment, both had let their guard down completely; there was a moment of peace and respect between them. Many times, Bruce has been called inhumane or even unhinged for offering this branch, but it isn’t an inhumane thing to have done. He isn’t looking at all the wrongs and horrible things Joker has done and condoning them. He’s seeing past them to the human he is—to the man he once was, to the person he could have been, and what he will become. I think that makes him more human than ever.

The problem is, Joker didn’t trust his promise. He admits to it in his joke:

The point wasn’t that it's impossible to walk across the beam of light; Joker didn’t believe his offer of salvation to be impossible. The punchline was that the friend would turn off his light when he's halfway across. He’s afraid Batman would give up on (or even trick) him before he reached the “promised land”. He saw how effortlessly Batman jumped the gap, and knowing he can’t reach it as easily, he doesn’t dare hope that he’ll hold out for him. Even he is tired of pretending. He goes as far as to apologize.

Of course, this isn’t the only batjokes timeline. My point is to say that despite everything they’ve done to each other, and all the pain they’ve inflicted, there is real, genuine love beneath it. In the end, they’re both human, and they can bring out the humanity in each other. They could become so much more.

Would they overcome their differences enough to be in a relationship? that’s an even longer post. but you bet your ass I think so 👍

[fifiophobia]

A collection of times people behind the scenes of something have said something like:”it’s like they’re in love or something” about two characters with complicated relationships

Amanda Overton (writer for Arcane) on Ekko and Jinx -

Guy Perkins (marketing producer for the Arkham games) on Batman and Joker -

[lankylordoflevity]

So something I’ve been absolutely obsessed with lately is Joker’s descriptions of what it would be like for him to kill Batman. More specifically, I’m fascinated by the fact that, in at least a couple of them, there seems to be this common thread of peace throughout. 

Take, for instance, these panels from Batman (2016) #29 where Joker is describing his preferred method of killing Batman at the dinner party with Riddler and Bruce:

Another example of this exists in Batman/Catwoman #9, when Joker is detailing his fantasy about killing Batman to Selina (which, might I add, has some pretty blatantly sexual undertones):

While both of these descriptions are certainly brutal and contain an element of sadistic pleasure from Joker, they also reveal this underlying desire within him to see Batman at peace. In the first example, the peace comes from death at the Joker’s hands, while in the second example, Joker chooses to kill Bruce only after he has finally seen him content with the work he has done in Gotham. 

This concept ties in really nicely to greater discussions about how Joker feels towards Batman and what he wants out of their complicated relationship. In these instances, it seems that Joker’s actions are motivated by care and affection in addition to hate. He wants to see Batman in pain, but he also wants to see him happy, two desires that he consistently demonstrates in his quest to draw out the darker parts of Batman’s psyche. Joker wants Batman to go feel the mental anguish that he has, but he also wants to help him give in and find peace with his mental illness(es), because that was what helped Joker move on and become a stronger person. (These contradictory desires are also shown in Joker’s overarching quest to be the color to Batman’s darkness, usually through extremely violent methods.)

As is the case with most of Joker’s feelings, though, his feelings on the topic of Batman finding peace are self-contradictory. For example, in Batman (2016) #49, when Joker and Catwoman are discussing the upcoming BatCat wedding, Joker clearly expresses that he can’t see Batman happy, because he wouldn’t be Batman, which would mean that Joker wouldn’t have anyone to stop him anymore, and therefore, would be purposeless:

All of this information put together suggests that Joker is pursuing a self-defeating mission by chasing two contradictory goals. This makes sense because Joker is an inherently contradictory character. Everything from his mission-like dedication to his nihilistic philosophy (”fighting for meaninglessness but giving meaning by virtue of the fight,” as he puts it in Endgame) to his love-hate relationship with Batman screams self-contradiction, and it’s likely that he would be conflicted in a similar way when it comes to true desires for Batman’s mental state, too. He wants to make Batman suffer - to force him down the dark hole that he finds himself in - but he also wants to see Batman find the same peace that he found in his own “insanity.” Ultimately, though, he can never have either outcome, because then Batman would no longer be Batman, and therefore, Joker could no longer be the Joker.

Anyway, all of this is to day that Joker, somewhere deep within him, seems to want to give Batman a peaceful ending?? At the very least, it is something he fantasizes about on occasion, and there’s something particularly strinking to me about that. It seems to suggest that sometimes, Joker wants a beautiful, violent finality, but that his commitment to this cycle of violence keeps him from following through on that desire because then his “fun” - and his relationship with Batman - would end. 

[clownfishbites]

Ok it’s time for the St Augustine Joker meta. Sorry if it got a bit long I just have a lot of thoughts.

I find it so interesting that he would bring up St Augustine in that moment. I wasn’t a huge fan of the run in general but I thought it had its merits and this bit was one of them because I’m a sucker for batjokes that is also religious fanaticism.

For St Augustine, ‘grace’ in this sense is not something that needs to be found or earned, the Catholic doctrine states that it is given freely, a gift from God to mankind.

Batman gives Joker grace when nobody in the entire world will, I mentioned it a bit in my last meta but think Batman: Cacophony, Batman: It's Joker time, Batman: Devil's Advocate and literally every time he doesn't kill him, or protects him from harm when nobody else would. He is giving him grace that does not have to be earned, it's a benevolent gift from the divine. Or at least that's how Joker is seeing it, a rationalisation for why Batman spares him when nobody else would.

St Augustine tells God that "it is only by Your grace and mercy that You have melted away the ice of my evil". St Augustine needs God in the same way Joker needs Batman, to act in opposition to his 'evil', to be worshipped with the intention of being the gravity that keeps him on Earth, or in his own words, the compass pointing true north.

I'm not going to get too carried away but I think it's a pretty interesting comparison that's existing here between St Augustine and God, and Joker and Batman.

"head towards God and remember, everything else is chaos"

If Batman is the entity that is salvation, the thing to be drawn to- he isn't just the opposite force, but the only other thing in existence, because Joker defines himself as chaos. There is Divinity and Chaos and that is all. It's a nice lens on Joker's perspective that every other living thing is a prop in his pursuit of Batman's love and attention.

Religion is a choice, but how could Joker pick any other divinity, when he freely acknowledges that Batman is his creator. One of St Augustine's concepts surrounding human creation is that of original sin- that being that everybody is born with sin, born tainted ever since Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden.

But if everyone is born tainted, lives tainted and there is no real assurance of redemption, what actually is the point in trying to be good, to be a virtuous person, if someone like the Joker can just come into the church and take your life. Or from the pov of the Joker what is the point in any of it if we are born ruined.

We return to the idea that Joker sees himself as beyond salvation in the traditional sense, he's in a sunk cost fallacy but with being evil. But just to push this to it's limit, his very existence shakes faith in a creator that is all good,

Where is the grace of God in a world that allowed him to exist?

In the absence of divine light and a creator that loves him, he desperately seeks the opposite, divine darkness and a creator that hates him. But Joker loves him no less for it because Batman is all that exists in his world.

"head towards love and everything else is chaos"

Here he's changed the words of St Augustine, altering it from following God to following love, and he says this while heading towards Batman which is...basically the entire point of this, Batman is his love, Batman is his divinity.

But even Batman has to devote himself to an idea bigger than himself, and he can only stand in opposition, his crusade would be over if he truly cleansed Gotham of all evil- OR, as Joker suggests in this comic, if he became happy. If he didn't have to exist in opposition, if the misery that fuelled his crusade was taken away

Joker can only stand in opposition too- we know this because we see how completely he crumbles apart when his opposition is removed.

Batman functionally exists as half of a whole, in his own way Joker's speech is confronting this reality, albeit in a much more roundabout way than he explains it to Selina.

And this is why neither of them can ever truly escape this cycle, their aspect of devotion would die the moment the other was removed from the equation, and with it divinity and chaos would cease to exist, and so would the world.

I love cosmic batjokes.

[ging333rgesus-v-uphurglingelwiwi]

im high pls dont make me name my batjokes meta

this post may be implicit/common knowledge, but having not seen much discourse around the mechanics of batjokes' dynamic compels me to catalog. there's sm to unpack here, so excuse lapses in structure or flow.

first off and most importantly, joker's battle with bruce is an existential one, he wants to justify himself in the eyes of his maker, his reshaper, whose perpetual control and prowling enabled, and ultimately exposed, the failure of his veneer of heroism and ability/adeptness, and birthed a distillation of that failure. the failure to circumvent criminality and violence, continually indulging retaliative brutality and unresolved anger, edging catharsis in assuming a protective and dominant role as to compensate for his loss and pantomime vicarious past reclamation and authority. constantly stagnant, incessantly unfulfilled, an everlasting outburst if you will, addressing not his material conditions but feeding his metaphysical ones. joker moulds himself around bruce's worldview, concerning himself with the salvation eternally eluding bruce, achievable through the violence that birthed batman and reinvented joker in turn.

this is a dialectical affliction, one desperate in nature, to validate that he wasn’t a mistake, a deviancy, to prove that a singular, perhaps seemingly insignificant element can transform anyone, unchain them, and joker refuses alternatives because batman forever dances, is forever chained by both his insistence on normalcy, but also his neglect of it. joker wants foremost, to matter to his creator, to break perfunctory monotony and elicit true understanding and oneness, have his existence be purposeful and intentioned, proving himself worthy, the one that finally cracks the elusive figure and chiefly, achieves ordainment in the eyes of his saviour — embrace, his personhood returned to his creator’s hands as to ascend batman into godhood, inextricably coalescing them.

it’s a labour of love, devotion, joker truly loves THe BaTmaN, bleeds and lives and offers up gothamite sacrifices as to resuscitate his vacancy, bless him with unadulterated purpose, validate the meaningless of the earthly. ultimately, batjokes are cyclical, that: from ash you were birthed and to ash you shall return, sh1t. what confuses that however, is how dialectical they are (as aforementioned), they embody a yin & yang dynamic after all. however, ultimately, joker wants to birth the batman who laughs [like when you think about it — batman realizing joker's philosophy and transcending humanity], to eliminate bruce's restraint and contradictory morality as to, ironically, create a pure, militant reaper encompassing gotham's brutality and abandon. joker is fighting for gotham's soul in more ways than one, on the physical level — crippling its normative function, inundating it with senseless violence, and on a metaphysical level, fighting for its symbol of order and constraint, someone who arose as an abstract embodiment of gotham's institutional enforcement, a distillation of authoritative fear, gotham’s punitive restrictiveness, the abstraction of otherworldly, insurmountable power, an inverted reflection of the very thing bruce is and was unable to overcome, aiming to strip them of their defences as to coax their primality, a violent denuding as to be sculpted anew, the same enlightenment he was afforded. to be broken so thoroughly that you become pure. to shatter pretence and baptize gotham, or its seemingly intractable moral paragon, in hedonistic freedom, uniting them with his gory rebirth. and joker, with this hedonistic perspective, recognizes that capacity in batman, recognizes it as his truth as one who was born from that brutality and violence and continues to endure it, seeing it as the purest form of expression and the underlying nature of existence.

he glamorizes his own death at the hands of the one who rebirthed him bc it will rebirth his creator in turn, allowing him to fully embody his godhood. it will afford the joker true meaning — once again my metas coming back to the struggle for existence but universal themes gonna universe [with the melody] — however, bc of the dialectics of batjokes, the struggle is a testament to their bond, it’s a seduction, a courtship, its authenticity and potency dictated by scale and intensity (aka their Stockholm is mad), the commitment to enduring joker’s forcible conversions, and foremost, to joker martyring himself to batman’s perpetual aggrieved ministrations, the irony in trying to fix someone through cruelty, conflict everlasting in one’s subjugating machinations. the more joker seizes, the further his cost sinks. bruce becomes steadily entrapped with and by the one person who can never leave him, the magnitude of those around him continually strained against the joker, the onus to humanize a sadistic, inhumane murderer forever ballooning. joker’s mortality, his humanity becoming further pathologized, his undying ceaselessness a type of consolation, a mark on bruce’s own consciousness, to save the one person forever bound to him, justifying his heroism and the incongruity between them, the fundamentalist moral dividing them: do not kill. batman's consideration, thusly, is birthed from a deep resentment, the flagellation of abstinence, maintaining the one thing delineating human from unfeeling instrument [of violence]. that resentment festering into a neurotic sort of dependency, joker acting as his NorthStar of morality, subsuming his sense of self, entrancing and ensnaring him. without the joker, batman is slowly cannibalized, unable to exist. whatever, i’m tired. this better be good enough cause its going up either way.

to conclude, this song [pay for it by jeff and the mindful selfless chastites]

encompasses batjokes perfectly. the eternal struggle, the damned position and conundrum batjokes find themselves saddled with, their respective lives being their sort of penance, an inability to ever truly connect without eliminating the other, love transmorphed into a twisted, destructive passion disinterested in its untainted iteration and consequently further estranging them.

(there was another song too but i forgor 🤷🏿‍♂️ [AN: not bc i was high, i could not conceive of this high)

[oh-there-she-goes]

Batman #145 (preview)

It infuriates me how Zdarsky kept having his Joker refer to Zur en Arrh as the real you or the true Batman. I understand there are many ways to write a character such as Joker, but to have him regard the OG Batman, who in part made him, as a second best to Zur, whom he had only met twice in his entire career, is so...jarring.

I sure damn hope Zdarsky was still cooking and intentionally having Joker spouting nonsense to mess with Batman here because God forbid if Joker was truly being sincere, it would taint all the history between him and Batman in the past decades, turning their dynamics lukewarm if not deploringly lackluster.

And why would Joker care to break the like of Zur in the first place? As formidable as he may, what's so sacred about Zur that needs defiling?

His swift execution of justice? Disproportionate uses of violence? Or his unadulterated brutality? Were these the qualities that left the Joker so enamoured?

One may say it's only natural that Joker would want to unleash his chaos upon Zur, who thinks himself a personification of control and order. But even considering his extreme measures, Zur has never stood against Joker at his core in the ways that Batman has.

In a world where nothing matters, Batman swoops in and fights him by trying to give meaning to everything. And he saves Joker, too, because he believes all lives are worth saving. And that's why Joker is determined to break him. He needs Batman to be wrong.

But what about Zur? Zur is just another man in power. He's dangerously competent, but he upholds no sanctimonious codes. They fight because they have different goals, but there's nothing inherently personal. Joker would not mourn the loss of Zur, and Zur would never feel the weight of guilt from refusing to let his monster bleed to death.

Then again, it might simply be my fault that I lack media literacy. Perhaps it has been Zdarsky's intention all along that Joker was lying. Maybe Joker elevating Zur to such esteem was just a part of his plan to push Bruce to ascension?

On a not-so-unrelated note, as there are many references to Scott Snyder's work in this run, I can't help chewing on how Zdarsky and Snyder differ in their interpretations of Joker.

While Snyder's Joker made it clear that he only cared about Batman and not Bruce, he had never wished for Batman to forgo his humanity.

The most Joker demanded of Batman was to get rid of the family that burdened him (which, funnily enough, Zur agreed). But his resentment stemmed from loneliness and jealousy.

In his heart of hearts, Joker knew they could continue their dance because Batman let it be so, hence the belief that his feelings towards Batman were reciprocated.

Joker even came to admit at one point that he no longer wanted to see Batman broken. What he wanted was for neither of them to win.

The Batman Who Laughs #4 (2019)

And unless something akin to 'Last Knight on Earth' happened, I see this as their dynamic in later years until either (or both) of them perished (which is unlikely to be soon as they both refused to let the other die).

Therefore, this Joker would never want Zur to enter the picture as it had been shown time and time again that when met with the more brutal, more...radical Batman(s), he always chose to side with the Batman who stayed humane.

Like when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, Joker is in love with Batman who refuses to change.

Batman: Last Knight on Earth #3 (2019)

The True Batman, for him, was the Batman who could withstand any test Joker and the world threw at him and remained the same.

Well..., who would like to keep dancing with a man who wouldn't dive from the top of the building after you anyway?

Still, I want so bad to be wrong about Zdarsky. I hope he has plans for them more than he lets on. (T w T)

[gigachad-joker]

I’ve always found this interaction in Batman Superheavy between amnesia Bruce and our supposed Retired Joker to be so interesting as well as gut wrenching. DC’s choice to show us what both of these men could have been like without the trauma that made them what they are only to throw both of them right back into the bitter, harsh reality of their defined purpose in Gotham, somehow left me feeling like it was a cop out. There was never a happy ending for Joker, even in his ‘retirement’ he was ready to commit suicide and there was never a happy ending for Bruce either because the city would always find a way to make him Batman. No matter what happens to either of them, they can’t survive without the other and will always find ways to come back to each other. Even in his sanity Joker couldn’t stop himself from speaking to Bruce. It’s why I find this scene so confusing, why Joker wouldn’t want Bruce to become Batman again, so much so that he begs him not to. When Jokers actions, the gun, tell us a completely different story. They tell us that he misses Batman, he misses their dance. So why beg for the opposite of what you want?

[rosie-dear-rosie]

Not to out myself as someone who could write an unprompted essay on homoeroticism in Batman media, but Batman: Europa really went off when she said “I’m going to crystallize this vaguely queer but deeply intense relationship between Batman and The Joker that we’ve been cultivating for decades by creating a moment in which the sharing of blood is the cure for illness not the cause of it”

I just think that was really girlboss of her.

[psalmsofpsychosis]

[distort-opia]

Its very funny to think about how both bruce and joker have shrines of eachother.

Imagine dick sees all the joker photos and items that bruce keeps at the batcave and goes "hmm....." then at a mission he ends up at joker's safehouse that has a bunch of photos of batman and missing batarangs and newspapers with batman headlines and goes "hmm....."

To be fair, Bruce is a hoarder-- he collects trophies and mementos from most of his cases, and a lot of his encounters with crime involve Joker, so it's explainable why the Cave is so full of Joker-related memorabilia. And Joker is a self-proclaimed Batman-obsessed freak, so I don't think anyone would bat (heh) an eye at him having walls plastered with Batman posters either.

With Bruce it's once again a matter of degree. Sure, he collects things related to all his villains. But does he discover that his mother is Joker in an alternate Universe and then has a huge-ass custom made his-mother-as-Joker card to put next to his already existing Joker-from-his-own-universe card??

The New Golden Age #1

Does Joker ruin his life (again) by fucking up his relationship with his fiance (again) and taking away all his money, forcing him to relocate from the Manor and create a different base of operations... to which he only brings the huge Joker card??

Batman (2016) #106

It's stuff like this, y'know, that I would really like someone to call out within Universe. Let Dick or Khoa or Selina actually go "Hey Bruce! This is kinda weird!" What's funny to me though is that apparently, Dick has talked about this stuff with Bruce, but... he explained the dynamic between Batman and Joker and how it works on a symbolic level to Bruce? Which is frankly fascinating:

Batman: Hush #7

It does make sense, Dick grew up with the whole insanity. He probably understands it best out of the Batfam. He caught Joker in his beginnings, too; he fought Joker when he still did fun harmless gags, before he went full murderous monster. Still, it's hilarious to imagine a twelve-year-old having to sit Bruce down and seriously explain to him how his relationship with his nemesis works, because Bruce is just that repressed and emotionally stunted about it. (Sure, you could argue that Dick did this when he was Nightwing, but I think this is funnier.)

[f0gman]

I was reading old batjokes comments and this has a crazily accurate analogy why their relationship works as well as it does

@AssasinB (ComicVine)

You are the only carnivore in an island populated only with herbivores, and you decide you are not going to eat them as you realize this creatures are meaningful and an important part of the island that surround them. So, you decide to protect them instead. You interact with them and get attached to some of them, and they become your closest friends, perhaps your only companions in a place were everyone else looks bad at you. But, you become the protector of their island, and some of this creatures began to like you and look up to you.

And then, one day, another carnivore haunts the island and start eating the herbivores you protected, while cruelly having fun in causing them pain. This carnivore looks at you, and finds it funny that instead of eating this stupid creatures you decided to befriend them. So he mocks you, laughs at you, and eat more herbivores just to annoy you. The two of you fight, you save some herbivores, he kills more and hurts the ones closest to you. But then, why in heavens sake you did not kill this monster? Why after fight and fight you still refuse to end this madness and save the island of herbivores from this crazy carnivore?

Because, you began to realize that this carnivore and you, are perhaps the only ones on the island. And despite having found friends among the other creatures, they are never, ever going to truly understand who you are, or the hunger you endure each night just to keep them safe. Despite everything you done for them, you still essentially a carnivore and they are herbivores. You are different from them and will never be like them, no matter how much you act like they do.

And this other carnivore, despite doing exactly the opposite of everything you stand for, is the only one in the whole island who truly understands you, who knows what you and him are. And more importanlty, he knows exaclty how lonely you feel. So he is, in a twisted way, your only true companion.

[lankylordoflevity]

Current mood is wanting to see Batman kill the Joker not out of anger or vengeance or justice or whatever but instead out of mercy. Joker is so far gone and his life brings misery to everyone around him including himself. The kind thing - the heroic thing - to do is to let him go. It would take some major reflection and self-scrutiny on Bruce’s end in order for him to let go of the “I can fix him” complex he has but I honestly can’t think of a better reason for Batman to break his no killing rule.

[clownfishbites]

OK SO,

I’m guessing Batman/Joker: Switch (2003) is a bit niche since I hadn’t heard of it until really recently. But as the CEO of niche quasi character studies of the Joker from the early 2000s I’ve gotta give this one it’s flowers.

It starts out with an interesting premise that it doesn’t really use, but the opener is this:

So I was super hyped thinking this was gonna be one of those awful medical malpractice character studies that I love, where it examines what happens when you forcibly unravel the Joker personality with deeply unethical therapy.

(I love that concept and trust I’m writing a batjokes fic about something similar.)

But working on that theory, Batman comes to London to find Joker who has been let loose after what seems like a very unethical surgery where someone removed his smile and put it on the back of his neck. He’s not quite himself, getting a bit lost in the lines between himself and Batman, wandering around trying to solve what happened to him and forgetting to eat or take care of himself.

Which is where we get this great moment:

I love it. The second somebody genuinely cares and intervenes on his behalf he assumes it’s Batman.

I really like the way the panels are drawn here, leaning into the surrealism of Joker's wide eye, and the smile in the place it shouldn't be, it's all very Dali. This, in combination with the fairly rare show of vulnerability from Joker, and the totally disconnected nonsense way he speaks in this one, really heightens that feeling of 'oh there's something wrong here', it's weird seeing a broadly sympathetic take on Joker.

But they know each other too well, because upon showing up, forcibly giving him medication is actually one of the first things Batman does.

Batman reclassifies the lines between them, actually helping Joker get back to his baseline self. He doesn't capitalise on the confusion as a means of pacifying Joker or anything, he just rigidly reinforces the status quo- returning Joker to himself and putting them both back in Arkham.

But then we learn the real kicker: Joker asked for the surgery. It's really interesting to see the collage of his behaviour from far away, because this pretty extreme facial self-mutilation for the sake of a wider point, or just for comedy we won't see again for 10ish years, until he gets his face taken off by the Dollmaker before DOTF.

Just to quickly return to the initial vulnerability from Joker this issue teases the reader with. It does strike a fairly sympathetic tone, framing Joker as the victim of some cruel joke for once, removing his smile. But now we know he asked for it, literally. It isn't so much an ‘oh he got what he was coming to him’, but that the sheer amount of pain, psychological, physical pain the Joker experiences every day, due to this lifestyle he has chosen, is all still a direct result of his own choices. One bad day, or whatever backstory he may have had that led him here, we know that it is categorically not the only option. He is truly the architect of his own misery, he very much was the first victim of the Joker, and I find it interesting that this comic forces you to take that perspective. That even a vulnerable, half-starved and mentally confused Joker is this way because he "begged" for it, and is now facing the consequences of his own actions, with the faith that Batman will care enough to save him.

[zeroducks-2]

Okay Zero, who's the worst. Eobard or Joker?

Joker is the worst when it comes to Batman. He's Bruce's narrative foil and his raison d'être, he's the embodiment of everything Batman fights (and abhors) and in a meta sense, he's also queer, flamboyant and immoral while Batman is straight, serious and righteous.

However, Joker is also someone Bruce can't live without. He's possibly the only one who truly, intimately understands Batman and why he does the things he does. And he doesn't even judge him! Joker is happy that Batman is Like This™, the good and the bad, wouldn't want to change him, accepts him exactly the way he is, whereas Bruce's loved ones will always have something to say about who Batman is and how he does what he does. And for all his talk about how wrong everything Joker represents is, also the other way around is true. Bruce understands Joker (so much so that sometimes he's scared by this) and at this point in his "career" basically needs him to function.

Eobard is the worst when it comes to Barry. He's is so fast and so unhinged that when he's involved, it's an All Hands On Deck situation and all the other speedsters need to come and help stop him. He is the Reverse Flash, literally, but not just because of the Negative Speedforce - where Barry forgives, Eobard holds perennial grudges. Where Barry gives a second chance (and a third and fourth and a fifth and a sixth and a-), Eobard will declare you're his mortal enemy at the slightest offense. Where Barry is full of unconditional love, Eobard has no idea what does it even feel to love and be loved and cannot simply conceive it. Which is part of why Eobard wants to be Barry (he has a perfect life), but also wants to have him (no one should ever be close to Barry but Eobard himself), but also hates him so much: everyone loves Barry, but how can Barry possibly love everyone back? For Eo love is a quantifiable thing, and it's quantified in the attention you give, and so it's impossible that Barry is sincere when he claims to love all the people he loves. It's just not possible. He must be lying.

But Eobard is also the person who knows Barry better than anyone else. Eo is the cause of a lot of his pain and turmoil, and recognizes this. Where other people belittle Barry's feelings and don't take his suffering seriously, urging him to just get over it, Eobard understands. Barry is the reason why he exists and in his distorted, psychotic way Eobard is devoted to him like to a divine being, and will never let him go, and will always feel for him what he can't feel for anyone else, because there isn't enough room in his heart for anyone but Barry.

If the question was "who can make more damage between Joker and Eobard", then obviously Eobard. If we don't count the meta stuff that applies only to Batman, Joker is just an unpredictable serial killer. Eobard is a chronomancer who can fuck your life up starting from when you weren't even born (in fact, he can make it so you never will be born at all), and change the literal course of time. Then there are also all the average speedforce abilities.

If the question was "who did more awful things between the two", then I'm going to have to use a meta answer and say Joker - Eobard doesn't appear in all that many DCU medias, while Joker is everywhere, and so going by numbers he did more damage because he had more chances to. But his reach is human, Eobard can erase an entire timeline if he so wishes, so it's two very different ballparks anyway.