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psalmsofpsychosis · 3 months

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"#Batman resists his own insanity so it spreads to e v e r y t h i n g around him"

You can't just say this and not elaborate in great detail. PLEASE elaborate oh my God. I do agree but I want to hear every single thought you have about this topic.

Btw, I'm the same Anon who asked -- or not really asked but more so talked -- about Batman and Joker's soulmate sort of bond.

AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN WITH "COMBINING JOKER'S HEAD WITH BATMAN'S BODY"???????

I was thinking along the lines of the concept version and how they could never be satisfied like this, united in one body. What is the result of mixing chaos and order? What is the result of mixing the act of forgetting the past and fixating on it? What do you get through combining the ideology of making everything matter and taking all meaning away?

The result is that the pure concepts become stained and dull, pushed away from their original function, losing their purpose to oppose each other.

Becoming one entity is the act of becoming complete (concepts being stained) and losing the thing that made them them. Batman and Joker were never meant to unite in this way with overlapping voices, finishing each others thoughts and sentences and it SHOWS. I'm in love with their grotesque obsession with each other that borders on love and punishment. Their desire to win and conquer the other for good but never being able to because losing one side takes away the purpose of the other.

That's why I'm so, so, SO disappointed with how the Batman Who Laughs turned out. Where are my identity crises? Plural, because this could never be an one-and-done kind of deal. They became OneTM, inentionally or not, but BeforeTM, they were always wondering what it would be like. Batman could try to get closer to Joker's mental state but never fully experience it, same with Joker. But now they are OneTM and then what? Batman is just the Joker with Bruce's memories and face. I can't begin to describe how boring that is. That's like if DC made a "Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe" story only they used Joker instead of Deadpool.

Do you see my vision? Can you feel my pain? I wanted to psychoanalyse that asshole with my amateurish psychology knowledge but they only gave us a watered down Joker who makes other Batmen less interesting upon contact. WHERE ARE THE IDENTITY CRISES?? WHERE IS THE DIFFICULTY IN MAKING A DECISION?? WHERE ARE THE LENGTHY MONOLOGUES ARGUING BACK AND FORTH OR CONTRADICTING EACH OTHER ALL THE TIME??? The Batman Who Laughs is basically Two Face but without the wall seperating Harvey and Two Face. Joker!Batman should be unable to do anything or constantly switch between Bruce and Joker or save one life and then turn around and kill it. Like, where is the complexity? Why the hell is that guy only a murder machine?? That was neither Joker nor Batman's whole purpose??

Tell me all your thoughts, my friend, while I'm here spinning in circles and going insane. I'll never get out of this alive, you'll still find me ruminating on this on my deathbed.

I swear, if you give an absolute banger of an answer again, I'll come and start living in your walls.

Have a nice day!! :)

ANON LOVE OF MY LIFE, i'm shoveling all the insides of my walls out as we speak, you can move in by Wednesday morning—

Like, the way i felt every single word you said in my bones. You are so right, and there are a couple different points here and it's gonna get longer than usual so i'll separate each thought thread to avoid drowning in lé brain soup.

• Re: batman resisting his own insanity, i feel like i have simultaneously talked about this in 7986 different ways and haven't said anything about it at all 😂 possibly most of it has been discord ramblings. Long story short, the spine of his narrative to me is that he actively resists his own humanity and in extension of it, his evil. He wants to be good. But there's also immense psychological/emotional/physical price we pay whenever we make these kind of choices; whatever we disown and banish to our subconscious, we project out into the world and unto the people around us. The load you refuse to carry will be carried by the people around you, because at the end of the day /someone/ has to carry it, it doesn't just disappear into ether. So, in a way, for Batman to remain good, to remain a hero, someone else has to be bad. The extent in which Batman keeps his goodness "pure and untainted" dictates the horrors created around him— and particularly the creation of Joker. I say creation because the existence of Batman as a concept absolutely necessitates the existence of Joker. In a way Batman does create him, and it's true that with Batman gone Joker and half the evil in Gotham would be gone too, not because Batman is an evil presence— but precisely because he disowns his own evil.

And the thing is, in the specific context of Joker, it has become this almost loving, adoring symbiotic relationship; Joker has willingly shaped himself to fit the outline of an evil that Batman needs to defeat, he has become the sin that Batman can overcome so he can stay a saint. I actually have a draft on this that i never finished, a meta about how all the coloring choices in Joker's design eerily resemble the different color stages of a wound and the bruising after, how Batman almost feels like Jesus with Joker as his side wound, Joker being the price he pays and the pain he goes through for his martyrdom in order to stay pure, for his idealogy to have any form of meaning and significance, Joker being his very own holy suffering.

We fundamentally understand reality in form of contrasts, internal ones, external ones. As you very well pointed out, without an innate sense of contrast, we cease to have any form of coherent grasp on different concepts, and they start to sort of become noise, they become nothing. Would you truly understand what a day was and grasp it as a concept if it wasn't followed by a night? So like, what i'm saying is, people around Bruce/Batman become what he needs because they love him and they want to help him keep his narrative, the structure of his psyche intact. They help him stay 'him' by taking on the burden of what he doesn't want to be, he subconsciously shapes them in the image of what he needs to uphold his identity as a good person. This is why Alfred becomes Joker to save him, this is why Selina is the more socially acceptable pretty Joker that Bruce can actually marry and bring to his family, this is why Joker and Batman feel like they can never escape their narrative, their roles and their performance. It's the reason the moment Batman lurches to kill The Riddler in "the war of jokes and riddles", Joker stops his knife with his hand. It's their defined roles, and the greatest act of love that noone except Joker would show him. Joker says "I'm the sacrifice. I'm the evil, i'm the one who kills, i have made this choice so you can make yours. You're the good one. If you become evil, it renders both your efforts and my sacrifice meaningless, and i can not allow that to happen." And it's a truly fascinating dynamic really, for all that Joker has and hasn't done throughout the Batmanverse history, when it comes to Batman he's irredeemably selfless. Everything he does regarding Batman is to keep Batman's sense of goodness and heroism intact, and in this context he's more pure than him. Everyone around Batman wants him to kill, perhaps rightfully so, they mean well. But Joker says "i'll bear all the unbearable evil so you dont have to, and we both acutely understand that without my existence you mean nothing. I will be the monster so you dont have to." And honest to god there's a heartbreaking affection to this, something noone else will ever be willing or want to offer to Bruce, not to this extent.

in 'the war of jokes and riddles' Bruce tells Selina that "what separates him from utter evil is a hand on his knife. Joker's hand." like bro, he knows. In a deeply twisted and gutwrenching way Bruce knows that noone loves him the way Joker does.

• Re: combining Joker and Batman's heads and bodies, i was thinking.... two concepts maybe?? 👀 one is more like the Dullahan myth, in which Batman loses his head but he isn't carrying it, Joker steals it. And then Joker loses his head and Batman has to keep it and he's forced to use it. It'd be an insanely fun concept; the Dullahan myth can be interpreted as the idea of death of self by supposedly losing all that would make you human; your thoughts and memories and logic, etc. Except that you still have a heart, and a body, and they're not exactly cooperative. It'd be fun to have Joker's mind trying to tame Batman's heart and body, each fighting and singing their own song, same for Batman. A version of the myth has Dullahan carrying a human spine in one hand, and i mean, the possibilities are endless!

But also another concept would be: two frankenstein monsters lmaooo, same sense of discordent internal landscape, same sense of ideological tension and conflict, but also someone's gotta [tw mentions of gore] chop chop them and sew their body parts together, and that can be another interesting element added to their fucked up dynamic ✨️ it can also be Joker as Dr Frankensten and he sews parts of himself to Batman in order to save him!

• Re: Batman Who Laughs, oh girl (gn), i have nothing to add that you haven't already said more beautifully than me. There's so much emotional nuance and complex philosophy that could've gone into that concept, it's certainly one of the hardest Batman story variations to pull off, and weirdly enough, the people who dont directly aim for "Batman becomes Joker/Joker becomes Batman" stories often tell a better more intricate tale about that transformation than the people who straight up shoot for the concept. One of the things that always sends a chill down my spine is the ending of Batman: Europa, in which Joker is terrified and screaming as Batman laughs and lurches for him; that's the dynamic, that's the Batman who laughs, and the most unsettling part of it is that, Batman doesn't change. He doesn't have to. On a core level he is quite frankly a bit fucked up, it's not a stretch for Batman to be evil, and that's why his goodness is meaningful. Cue Nietsche's quote, "Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws." Batman is not a good guy entirely, and that makes his goodness a conscious choice with so much weight and worth and significance. I dont think a lot of DC people understand this.

With Batman Who Laughs, the name kinda sums up the take unfortunately; it's a superficial interpretation that falls flat on its own face because the writers couldn't be assed to explore how a chemical combination of Batman and Joker's narrative would unfold. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as with any potent chemical reaction, the mixture is highly unstable and unpredictable, and that's the fucking fun of it. There's gotta be tension. I do think Batman and Joker can very well mix, i do think they can make a seamless fusion, but i dont trust any canon DC writers to handle the characterization well in a way that doesn't bore you out of your fucking mind. You gotta make a new person and you gotta capitalise on the core components both Batman and Joker share; their incessant sense of idealism, their need for purity, their volatile emotions and their aggression, their need to individuate from their context and deviate from the norm, take the third way out narrative wise, their philosophical and intellectual bend, their immense grief, their need to be oh so special and different 😂 they actually have a whole lot in common, this is why they're perfect enemies!

But yeah, writing that personality fusion is very hard because it's such an emotionally complex context and most DC writers have not felt a single emotion in the past 35 years aflhdtdhlf

Anyway yep i love your brain so SO much Anon, hope you have a wonderful day ❤️💕 and dont forget to tell me what ya think!!

#the way this ask had me scrambling through my desktop blog to find posts and then i realised that i dont like my desktop theme #so i overhauled the whole theme while i was writing this lmaooo #anyway yeah. goddd i need to finish that jesus/side wound meta one day.#it's a bit above my paygrade because i thought i'm pulling one single thread but turns out it was a whole 9 yard yarn pile #with three cats entangled in it #but the gist is more or less the same #but also ''what do you get through combining two idealogies of making everything matter and taking meaning from everything''#i need to gay lay down a bit. maybe die a little #i think they're not a single identity in this framework; they're cycles. you understand them as they continue each other #the way spring sprouts from the belly of winter; winter spreads from the spring's belly; they be like dat #anyway Anon you're out here working all my 2.5 braincells overtime godbless ❤️💕#Batman #Batman meta #Batjokes #Batjokes meta

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elysiaaurea · 2 months

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Hunter

‘Serials' - a type of nutcracker with no ‘parasite’ in them. War machines who turned against their human creators, and were made for the sole purpose of killing. Paul, one of the handful of surviving models, demonstrates his prowess in this matter against the Eyeless Dogs - to the awe of his involuntary companion; one (un)fortunate employee (you).

Owner of oc: @sodabranch my beloved <3

Serials concept belongs to: @hashal-nutcracker my beloved <3

Warnings: Violence (against eyeless dogs), mild blood. Mild threat of death Word Count: 1485

You hold your breath as the dog closes in, willing your hands to stop trembling as 2 enormous rows of razor-sharp teeth swallow your vision. Back against the wall with no sign, shovel or shotgun, the very real threat of death has you clenching your teeth bitterly. A pang of regret hits you that you won’t be able to keep your promise to Paul. His words come to mind one more time.

"Your life is mine. Don't you dare die."

You apologise silently, suppressing the delirious chuckle threatening to spill out when you realise that in spite of everything he’s done — the belligerence and hate, almost killing you several times, the promise to do so in the future — that you would've liked to see him again.

Absurd.

The dog's pointed teeth are inches from scratching your visor, spit dribbling from its maw. It won't be long now. You squeeze your eyes together and try with all your might not to think of what the next few seconds of agony will feel like. Nothing, as it turns out, for nothing happens. You wait a few more seconds before cracking open an eye and see the dog has paused its advance. Why?

Thump

The sound of something dull hitting the sandy rock, somewhere from behind the dog, to the confusion of both of you. You'd crane your head to see what it was if you weren't afraid of being torn to shreds. The dog withdraws a bit as it turns its head, listening for the sound, giving you more room to exhale a breath you didn't realise you were holding.

THUMP

Louder this time. Closer perhaps? Your brows are furrowed as you play the sound in your mind once more. It's familiar, and your heart quickens when the answer comes to mind. Was it really?… As the dog growls and swings its head back around, for a brief second you see him, the spot of blue against the orange backdrop. Standing 30 feet away with eyes gleaming red, glaring at the dog with the sharpest, coldest expression you've seen on him since he threatened to take your life. He lifts his right leg up and stomps down.

THUMP

With that the dog roars, spins its whole body around and charges at him. You duck to avoid its tail as it hits the stone wall, and catch a glimpse of the action once the pebbles finish falling: He lists right and twists out of the way of the beast’s open mouth at the last second. He stops to face it as it rushes past, watching it bite down on air before rearing its head at the sound of his metal boots scraping against rock as he backs up. The screeching sound of metal sliding out of its sheath rings through the air as he draws his sword.

It dawns on you that you have never actually seen him fight. You mean, properly fight. The average employee was hardly any effort at all for him to kill, and none of the mansion’s monsters ever seemed to want to challenge him when they were around. An itch in your brain tells you that you are about to see why.

The eyeless dog charges him again as he crouches - and leaps.

He shoots up just as it snaps at him. Easily clearing the height of the dog, he tilts forward as he sails through the air in a smooth arc. And for a moment he’s suspended mid-air, hanging upside down just above the dog.

A gasp escapes your lips as you watch 400 pounds of metal and wire move with the grace that would put an acrobat to shame. His legs, arms and chest swivel together in one perfectly coordinated movement, cape and tassels swirling around him as his eyes — never once breaking line of sight of the creature — find their target. He kicks and flips himself upright again, tucking his legs in with weapon poised to strike as gravity takes him.

In the glow of the dying sunlight, the reflected shimmer makes the blade glow with fire as he plunges it into the beast’s skull.

The ground explodes upon his landing. The deafening howl that follows pierces through your suit. Instinctively, your hands come up to cover your ears, only to find themselves pressed pointlessly against the sides of your helmet. Thankfully, it stops and you force your eyes open to see the silhouette of the beast within the dust cloud thrash on the ground as it tries to throw him off. But Paul holds fast to the handle, boots planted firmly on its back as it lurches in circles, roaring turning into a groaning cry, each snap at him weakening; and as fruitless as the last.

After a few seconds, it staggers and drops: dead.

Mouth agape, you stare on as in one fluid motion, he wrenches his sword from its corpse, a trail of blood following his blade as he flicks it off. He turns, facing you while he regards the blood with a subtle look of disgust until he looks up.

His eyes meet yours and your heart stops. He pins you with an impassive stare and under that gaze you feel yourself simultaneously freeze and set on fire.

This was a predator. A being made specifically to kill your kind. He wants you dead. He stopped you from dying. He protected you. A machine that hates you just protected you.

The maelstrom of thoughts spins violently in your head as you try to process it all.

Mercifully, his eyes slide off of you to glare at 2 other dogs that appeared, likely drawn in by the commotion, tails raised and growling. You find that you can breathe again, watching enraptured as he hops off the corpse and meets the first with the same vicious elegance as before, spinning to the side when it charges and slicing off its front paw. It cries out in pain, and brings its other leg down at him, to which he promptly hacks off with a swing. The creature hobbles backward, emitting a sharp whine of fear you’ve never heard till now while Paul closes in. Your own mortal peril forgotten, its pathetic whimper makes you cringe with a twinge of sympathy. Ceaseless, Paul takes his chance and delivers a clean slash across its jugular, effectively silencing it to gargling blood, dying as the other did.

Then his head snaps to the last dog, who breaks out into a run. Pivoting on his heels, he bursts from the ground. It takes him all of 5 seconds to close the distance. A shiver creeps up your spine as he lifts his arm, unable to look away as you just barely see him sweep the blade across its hind ankles. It collapses and skids to a stop. Yowling, its front paws dig frantically against the rock while kicking out its legs, now-useless feet flopping behind it.

Paul advances — slowly.

Soon, it too, is dead.

Through it all a thought screams at you that you should not be finding this horrifying display of skill as beautiful as you did; yet you would be lying if you denied it. He scans the area once more, eyes stopping on your rigid form, having not moved from your spot since the slaughter started. He steps away from the corpse and stalks towards you, bloodied steel still in hand. And when he’s in front of you, you meet his gaze as before, not hiding the look of awe that bleeds from your widened eyes.

Aside from the splatters of blood not his own, he does not look worse for wear. You expect him to say something, gloat or be angry, but instead, he regards you through impassible narrow eyes and raises the point of the sword just under your chin. If you were to look away now you’d skewer yourself on it, yet you’re too stunned to really notice or care, mind still reeling from the fact that he saved you. In the few beats of silence, you can almost hear the cogs of his brain turning as he considers.

Finally, he speaks.

“Impressed?”

He asks, the hissing rattle of his metallic voice is tinged with what sounded like amusement.

“Very.”

You respond with a breathy whisper. Anything else would have been a bald-face lie and both of you knew it.

He snorts, eyes blink to green again. He lowers his sword and flicks the residue blood off before sheathing it; it’s your cue to breathe again. You gulp down the retrospective fear, suddenly aware of how exhausted you are. The adrenal high of it all must have worn off.

“Get back in the ship, unless you want to get eaten alive.”

He orders with a growl and saunters off towards the sun as it dips below the horizon.

Wordlessly, you follow.

#lethal company #eyeless dog #lethal company eyeless dogs #lethal company nutcracker #lethal company oc #lethal company writing #Oc who is both not my oc but also totally my oc??#we shared a single braincell between the 3 of us #mostly me and soda going feral #Hashal is still sane bless them #i was supposed to be working on my own oc story whoops #the brainrot is terminal #im so scared posting laijewnkqweoijq

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