#selina’s worst fear being that the pain she’s causing her family will make leslie give up on her and ruin things for maggie

[inamindfarfaraway]

Joker Parks AU

Crossover AU of DC Comics, specifically Batman, and Dead End: Paranormal Park.

Joesph Kerr, better known by his stage name the Joker, is a famous TV and movie star, comedian and general personality. He’s egotistical and kinda shifty, but very charismatic, a brilliant actor and none of the rumours have ever been proven, so his popularity has endured over many years; his style of comedy is notably ironic, irreverent and morbid, while his trademark genre is chilling, thrilling, eerie, high-octane horror often with supernatural elements. He’s such a big presence that he’s got his own theme park themed entirely around him and his work. Lately he’s retired from the public scene though. In fact, fact, despite thriving on attention, he has this weird tendency to disappear every now and then and show up looking slightly different. Wait, how long is his career? Does anyone know how old he is?

Selina Kyle is a troubled teenage girl. Her cool, sly delinquent persona and cynical sharp wit hide not only pain, but a huge heart that cares deeply about people once she lets them in. She was born and raised in the East End of Gotham City, a district defined by poverty and suffering. Her mother committed suicide when she was just a young child. Her abusive father drank himself to death not long afterward. She and her little sister Maggie have recently passed into the custody of Leslie Thompkins, a doctor in the same neighbourhood who is a genuinely wonderful person and mother. But Selina is fiercely independent, carrying tons of unprocessed grief and guilt about her mother’s death and bitter disrespect toward the concepts of parents and authority, and as a result unable to accept Leslie or the notions that maybe her life can be good and she can be happy. And most crucially, that she deserves to be happy. This severely strains her relationship with Leslie because she continually sabotages it. It’s also taxing her and Maggie’s previously strong bond; Maggie is much more optimistic, sociable, cooperative and docile and unlike Selina, engages with the therapy Leslie’s signed them up for, making her the better adjusted sister. Part of Selina is jealous, the rest doesn’t want to drag her down. She becomes a security guard at Joker Parks to have a place to escape these tensions and interact with people who won’t know her tragic past unless she tells them. In the wake of a wild hiring, she takes this to the point of she running away to live in the park’s main building Dead End, a haunted mansion attraction that happens to actually be haunted. It isn’t the first time she’s ran away. She knows how to survive alone. That Maggie misses her and Leslie refuses to give up on her for some inexplicable reason can be dealt with later. Except from the start of this time, she isn’t alone. She has… friends. This is new and significantly complicates things.

Harleen “Harley” Quinzel is another troubled teenage girl. A boisterous, hyperactive eccentric, she chafes in her tedious life of mundanity and obscurity. Bullying has been a lifelong problem. She has low self-esteem, doesn’t consider herself special or worthwhile at all and is terrified of never amounting to anything, so she’s fixated on acquiring worthiness through sheer dedication: when it comes to passion and enthusiasm, nobody can top her. If anything her problem is being too intense. She has an idealistic worldview, seeing the best in people and wanting to believe there’s good in everyone. She’s painfully self-aware of her social ineptitude in practice, and studies psychological theory in great detail to try to compensate. Her inner empathy is high, she simply doesn’t always know how to apply it. While Selina has grown up too fast, Harley frequently comes across as emotionally immature. The one constant illuminating her dreary life has been her interest in the Joker. She’s a superfan. He makes her feel like she can be somebody, do something that matters, make a difference - not to mention he’s her celebrity crush. Even before getting hired there, she has encyclopaedic knowledge of Joker Parks. Her fashion sense and sense of humour are clearly partly inspired by his. Working at his theme park as a security guard is her dream job. She doesn’t think anything could possibly ruin her summer, however scary and scarring its occult underside might get. Unfortunately, the park takes this as a challenge.

Poison Ivy is an ancient immortal nature spirit thousands of years old, although she physically appears and half the time acts like a teenage girl, and definitely extremely troubled. She’s the spirit of the land the park and surrounding suburbia stand on, the guardian of its plants. She used to be a sweet soul. Humanity’s uncompromising expansion overpowered her magic - in response she’s learned to be a lot more ruthless and cunning in how she uses it - and she has been forced to watch her domain be devastated and defiled to this day, currently by a gaudy, totally unnecessary amusement park. And she feels it’s all her fault. It’s been a rough five centuries. The modern Ivy is a jaded misanthrope who despises humans. Their selfishness, greed, pride and indulgence are the only parts of them she’s experienced, so she acts callous right back. At the beginning of the story she’s so broken she’s lost faith in everything and everyone and thinks humanity’s excess has ruined Earth beyond salvation. Her goal is to sever her connection to her territory (removing her indestructible magic vine bracelets in the process) thus allowing her to leave the park and its shameful memories of her failure behind for another dimension inhabited exclusively by fellow supernatural beings. Where she can find peace… and make her first ever friends. This will take powerful magic. Hence why she’s initially aligned with the evil demon lord Temeluchus. However, this tangled thorn bush still has its roses. She does have a conscience and yearns for companionship and compassion. The mortal girls and Ace’s arrival sets her off on rediscovering the world’s good and beauty, discovering humanity’s and regaining her own direction and belief in herself. She slowly realizes friendship is several dimensions closer than she thought.

Ace is Harley’s beloved pet German Shepherd. (Yes, I’m stealing Batman’s dog because I can and it suits Joker and Harley’s shared playing card motif.) She wanted a hyena as a kid because Joker tames one to be his sidekick in a movie, but settled for a dog. He’s named after the hyena too. He develops human intelligence, speech, opposable thumbs and magical abilities after accidentally being possessed by Temeluchus and retaining a tiny fragment of the mighty demon’s soul. He’s unconditionally loyal to Harley, but simultaneously forms an independent identity. E.g. he hones his magical talent under Ivy’s tutelage and bonds with her over being fundamentally caught in a liminal space between the paranormal and the earthly. Having her oldest friend challenge her and assert his autonomy pushes Harley to mature and be more respectful of others.

Bruce Wayne is slightly older than Selina and Harley and a more experienced employee of the park who operates the Deathslide attraction. His personality fits perfectly into its gothic atmosphere. He joins the girls in unraveling the Joker’s mysteries and eventually Selina in a romantic relationship. The truth is that like them he’s desperately lonely, isolated by his sheltered background as the richest kid in Gotham and self-perpetuating poor social skills. Justice, helping people and detective work have given meaning to his life in lieu of connection with others. The reason he got his job in the first place was to figure out and expose the Joker’s corruption and deception, based on his impossibly long lifespan and the testimony of an old impersonator of him. Befriending the girls and Ace gets him invested in investigating the supernatural as well.

#yeah ​it has a darker tone than the show #i love harlivy but i don’t know if it would work here because one of them’s immortal and the other is not #and that’s sad enough with the friendships #listen LISTEN #harley singing ‘my frankenstein’ #ivy choosing earth over the spirit realm because a) her friends are there and b) the planet is worth saving and can be saved #in the second instalment harley treating ace like her bullies and teachers do her #(‘if you would just try to act normal we wouldn’t have a problem!’) #selina’s worst fear being that the pain she’s causing her family will make leslie give up on her and ruin things for maggie #brucelina trying to be a serious gritty teen detective duo except they need harley there for her knowledge #a whole instalment where the subplot is ivy and bruce watching a demonic game show together #ivy completely dropping her ‘i hate everything’ attitude around ace because he’s a dog and she can’t hate animals #the kid who supplies the magazine being barbara gordon #ivy not admiring the joker’s evil after the full reveal but boasting that her cynical view of humanity was been vindicated #and making harley feel even more stupid and naive for her faith in people #joker parks au #dead end: paranormal park #dead end paranormal park #de:pp #joker #the joker #selina kyle #harleen quinzel #bruce wayne #dc au #crossover au