a wild card (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} smileswithyou) wrote,@ 2008-10-11 22:41:00 |
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laugh, clown, laugh
basics. name: ----- alias: the Joker gender: male age / date of birth: ----- / ----- birthplace: ----- last seen: Gotham City, USA history. His mommy neglected him and his daddy beat him. Only… no. That’s just a little too cliché, isn’t it? How about this: he was just your average Gotham citizen, until one day the dull, unrelenting, monotonous weight of existence drove him… batty. Take your pick. Look, it doesn’t really matter where he came from. Only that he’s here. But you wanna know about these scars? The Bat gave them to him, oddly enough. Indirectly, but it’s still his fault. He used to be a grunt for the mob, see, but was otherwise a good guy. Wasn’t a career criminal or anything, because he had this beautiful wife and this dream that maybe one day he’d be living honest and decent with a white picket fence and everything. His girl was expecting and everything. But in this brief stint in illegal goings on, he happened to get involve din a bank job. And it got botched. Or the Bat found out. Or something. Because whatever happened, the gang he was running with got nabbed by the Caped Crusader before they even got so much as a good look at the cash, and suddenly it turns out he’s only one left not in jail. Well, his boss doesn’t like that, what the other guys picked up and likely to squeal and not so much as a nickel being sent his way. So one day, a week later, he comes home to his tiny little apartment and finds his boss standing there, and his wife, too. Only she’s not really standing at all. She’s been murdered, and had things done to her worse than murder, and there goes his poor little dreams along with her and the baby. And like that’s not enough, suddenly this former boss has got a knife in his hand and is coming at him with this look in his eyes, saying something about how he’s looking too down, and maybe he needs some help with that? Nah, nah, he’s kidding. He did it to himself. It’s punishment is what it is. Or, it’s a wake up call. It’s an ultimatum, that declares quite proudly that he is officially sending in his resignation to the human race and retiring to become a career freak. Because it’s better than the alternative. You live your whole life being nothing very much. It’s a good life, though, where you pay your taxes on time and you abide the law. You drive within the speed limit, and have a good job, where you work hard. And doesn’t that just make you an almighty sap? You’ve been taken in by the grand joke that God or whatever powers that be out there are trying to pull over your head. Because you live, and then you die, and in that single brief instance, you accomplish nothing. Feel nothing. And drugs and booze won’t do a thing; they’re artificial life. So you’ve got to find real sensation elsewhere. He found it on the edge of a knife blade a long time ago, and is determined to make sure that before he leaves this earth, he’ll have gifted others with such clarity of sight as he possesses now. He’s a preaching prophet, here to bless you all with a similar epiphany. Then again, it could have happened differently – you know how shoddy a man’s memory can be. It might’ve been that he was a little kid when it happened. It was his mom, you see. She was never all there in the head at the best of times, but for a long time, she just kept getting worse and worse. Muttering to herself, talking to people who weren’t there. His dad couldn’t take it, and walks out on the wife and kids one Thanksgiving, maybe just for irony’s sake. So there’s his mom, about ready to carve up the turkey, when she finally finds the note his dad left, and you can almost here this little snap when she takes that plunge over the deep end. And suddenly it’s just his mom standing there. With a knife. And she looks at the eldest of her darling little boys and says “You know, you got your father’s smile…” It’s enough to drive anyone crazy. It might’ve happened one way, maybe the other. He remembers it differently every time. If he’s going to have a past, he’d prefer it to be multiple choice. Look, you really want to know? Come a little closer, and he’ll tell you the real story. What is known for certain is this: he burst onto the crime scene in his current guise, greasepaint and purple suit and big wide smile and all, only very recently. And what a debut he made. Taking down mob banks when there were plenty of other more respectable targets out there in the city… you’d have to think he was some kind of nutjob. Because he’s not in it for the material gains, obviously. It’s the thrill of the chase. Which makes him dangerous and an unstable element, but also the last hope for a gang of mobsters looking for an answer to their prayers. And the clown’s got it for ‘em. Kill the Batman. Which sounds simple enough, if it weren’t for the fact that, soon enough, the Joker realizes he can’t. Can’t ever. He doesn’t want the Bat gone, whether by unmasking or murdering. Because the Batman’s the only challenge, the only hope this town can throw at him. Without an adversary, what would he be? Because maybe he isn’t really looking to see the city reduced to ash around him after all. At least, not yet. Not while there’s still fun to be had. He’s in it for the joy of the act of burning it, and more than willing to take it slow. The rest of his life, if the need arises. So he won’t torch the place immediately, watch it evaporate in a mushroom cloud. Rather… there’s a long fuse that’s been lit, and he’s just happy to wait for the fireworks. Currently, he’s biding his time at Arkham, because a guy’s always got to rest before he goes out to play again. And it looks like there’s plenty of fun to be had here anyway. At least, that's where he was, before finding himself on the island, sans everything except for his standard-issue uniform. And no make-up. Woe D: Will be starting from pretty much immediately after TDK. psychology. The Joker isn't the type who can be easily compartmentalized. Those silly doctors tried to do that. Tried to reduce him to a series of disorders and malfunctions. He knows that most people you can do that, whose whole beings are merely shaped by a few instances from the past, or one rogue complex or two. But not the Joker. Oh no. He's above such simplicity. The problem with the Joker is that he accumulates psychiatric disorders like old friends. He’s likely to be delirious as easily as depressed, hallucinatory as histrionic. Maybe throw in a little dissociative identity if he’s feeling particularly difficult. His mental state – and whatever interesting characteristics may be derailing him on that particular day – changes with his mood. Or maybe with his shoes. It’s hard to tell. Whatever little personality defects you’d like to throw his way…. Well, they probably fit. It might be an act, or it might not. Maybe he really is reinventing himself constantly. Insanity is an art you know, and only hacks will fall into repetitiveness. He's an anarchist to the core. A hedonist. A sadist and a masochist, and a genius. Body and soul, he has given himself over completely as a disciple of disorder, trite though that may sound. Tylder Durden on acid. He revels in destruction, and takes a perverse pleasure in bringing down great things. He believes with a passion that nothing is ever so beautiful as when it is pieces. Preferably bleeding. But whatever professions he makes to being fully for chaos, his madness does have a certain method to it. Yes, he's aware that he's constructed ridiculously precise plans and, you know, doesn't mind at all. Order to achieve chaos. Just another one of those little paradoxes which make him up. Another one of his little talents: reading people. They're not that hard, once you've had enough practice, really. Everyone has always got that one little... switch. The one turning gear upon which the whole mechanism, which, if pushed just so can make the entire otherwise flawless machine crumple into a mess of loose springs and cogs. Trust him, he's done it plenty of times to have gotten damn good at finding it. He's also not a bad predicter of peoples' behaviors. His policy is to think the worst of people and, honestly, he's usually right. Another one of this favorite games is to see how far a person can be pushed. And he has no sense of self-preservation, which might be a factor of why he's lived so long. He acts like he's immortal so, it seems, events seem to go along with him. Which isn't a good thing, of course. Fear is trait meant to help survival. appearance. He’s taller than he looks on the television. And the fact that he walks sometimes slightly hunched over doesn’t help things. But he really is quite a physical presence, just a dash over six feet tall, and solidly built. Not bulky, by any means, but never imagine that he can’t hold his own in a fight. Pre-Arkham, he was always in need of a bath, and maybe a shave. The accumulated filth has been washed off though, and he's been tidied up a bit during his stay in the loony bin. His mouth is sliced up – this would be evident even without the greasepaint he’s so fond of adorning himself with. It’s a Glasgow smile; he obviously must have gotten on the wrong end of someone’s knife. Or did it himself. It’s impossible to tell what the hell actually happened. His movements are irregular and shambling, as is his voice. He walks with a limp or, then again, he might not. His accent is marked Midwestern, or he could be faking it. Hard to tell what’s part of the act and what’s real – or if there’s even a difference. Hell, it seems like even he doesn’t even know some of the time, and one could imagine he prefers it that way. |