I JUST LOST MY SHIT listening to Joe saying he's been a fan of Jack Black since School of Rock and him getting all giddy because Jack gave him a shout out U GUYS it's like my 6-7 YEAR OLD SELF collided with my 25 year old self to fangirl over this exact meta moment when the current fave is fangirling about the past fave that got us into this mess of being a fan of rock music in the beginning when the current fave is the one that re-ignitied my love for it all over again
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I have some angsty headcanons about Vox. These are relating to his insecurity, mainly.
First of all, I like to imagine he's EXTREMELY clingy, especially to someone who's actually nice to him. But not in an overt way, no—he would never admit it, neither to you nor to himself, but he's deeply, deeply insecure. And so he tracks you around, borderline stalks you everywhere you go, burying it in his head and reinforcing an idea that he's an important part of your life, whether you talk often or not. He's desperate to hold on to any part of you that he can.
Any hint of validation you give to him is taken in ten-fold, and then doubled up against himself later, because, as many times as you say you enjoy his company, he's still going to think you're lying. And so, while you're calmly going about, (somewhat) enjoying your afterlife, he's watching you through the many cameras he has around the ring, snarling to himself any time someone interacts with you. But then, at the end of the day, he lays down to try to rest, and his mind is filled with contrasting thoughts - by all means, he's one of the most powerful overlords in Hell! He could order you to speak to him more! Of course you care about him!
...But... Do you? How could someone like you care about someone like him? And of course he's paranoid, too, wondering if all of this is some big ploy, some attempt to strip him of his power. And so, the next time he looks you in the eyes, he sees a hint of malice—malice that isn't actually there.
I also imagine that Vox would struggle with that with you, regardless. On one hand, it would seem easy to him on the surface, wouldn't it? But he's practiced his ability to feign confidence for decades at this point. He matches your energy perfectly, almost too perfectly, because he knows that the second he slips up and looks away from your eyes, it'll all come crashing down. Internally, he's fighting a battle not to glance aside just to get some relief from the pressure of your attention all on him.
And if you get angry at him, well... this struggle goes up tenfold. Vox deals with fear using anger—you confront him for something he did that both of you know is true, deep down, but he fights it tooth and claw, fully convinced that an argument is supposed to be won, not resolved. His composure slips more and more every second, in a desperate attempt to convince you that you're wrong, but soon you slip from his grasp as well.
He doesn't know how to cope with that. He spends all night at his screens, rage and despair brewing behind the monitor, watching as you spend time with other people, not him. He's desperate, desperate for you to come back and tell him that you love him, but you don't come back. He's hurt you, and now you're gone.
He knows it's his fault, but to others, he pretends it was you all along. He exaggerates how you spoke to him, playing you up as a bad person... but can't defend himself when someone disagrees. And so, on comes the self-destructive cycle again, Vox tearing himself down just as much as he does others, hoping that someday, you'll come back again to fill that empty hole in his heart so that he doesn't have to.
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Look. Don't get me wrong. I love the batjokes fandom literally everyone I've interacted with has been SO nice for such an insane ship it's a surprisingly chill fandom.
That being said... sometimes I feel Weird because a lot of the community (not all! but a large part) is like haha yeah my favorite fucked up toxic problematic ship love how twisted it is >:) batman wants to fuck that clown even though he literally killed his whole ass son it's so fucked I love it.
And that's fine! No problem with that. Power to you.
But I'm just over here like... what if they both got better together and processed their trauma and Joker made amends with everyone and everyone was happy and content as a family.
Like, the most compelling thing for ME in Batjokes is easily Bruce's refusal to view Joker the way most other people do. Even in arcs where he does dehumanize Joker, he at the very least makes an attempt to understand him. Everyone else is just like yeah, he's evil, he's just doing this shit because he enjoys it because he's a monster. But even when their relationship is at its worst, like in Joker War, Batman tries to understand where Joker is coming from. He doesn't just assume oh yeah Joker is just doing this because he's evil there's no logic behind his crimes he just enjoys it.
Bruce actually understands that Joker is trying to show him something, i.e., that he isn't being Batman right (in Joker's opinion). And even after Joker literally tears down his life, fucking reanimates his dead father figure to torment him and re-enacts his childhood trauma on the city, Bruce STILL ends up agreeing that he had a point!
Like to ME... Batjokes is about loving someone so transcendentally that you devote your entire existence to helping them. It's about having compassion for someone even after they commit horrific atrocities. It's about loving someone who everyone else hates and views as a monster. It's about someone loving the parts of someone that they consider terrible and unlovable. It's about being misunderstood your entire life and finally finding someone who gets it. It's about love for one person motivating you to stay alive in a world that's been nothing but cruel to you. It's about finding someone who makes everything awful that's ever happened to you seem worth it. But most importantly it's about the refusal to give up on someone who everyone else has long since declared a lost cause.
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