application for thespiderswalk
PLAYER NAME: Ian
AGE: 20
PERSONAL LJ: pridefall
EMAIL ADDRESS: meaculpable AT live DOT com
AIM SCREENAME: priestlyish
EXPERIENCE RPing: Several years
CHARACTER NAME: Jack "The Joker" Napier
CANON SOURCE: The Batman Mythos
TIMELINE: Detective Comics 655, shortly after being shot in the face.
CANON ABILITIES: Here
PERSONALITY: Christ, how do you even begin to define what an insane person’s true “personality” really is? The Joker is so mentally fractured that there is really no real way to just “explain” how he thinks in mere words, seeing as his level of insanity literally makes him create a new personality for himself every single day. The Joker is therefore never held as to having a static characterization in this respect, because no matter how badly an author mangles his base persona, any and every characterization of him can simply be explained away as being a “new personality.”
The “Core” of the Joker, however, never changes, and can be expressed as thus:
+ If it isn’t funny, then it isn’t worth doing. Make the unfunny funny to SOMEONE, always.
+ The Batman’s attention is the more important thing to have, and I will do anything to get it. Anything.
+ Life’s a stage, and the name of the play is “Chaos.”
From a literary standpoint, authors are usually divided into two “camps” regarding the Joker’s personality: on the one hand, the Joker can be interpreted and written as being nothing more than a sweet, if oft misguided "trickster" character who plays harmless pranks on people just for kicks, which is exactly what his Silver Age incarnation was. On the other hand, however, the Joker is written as an unrepentant sociopath who kills people just because he can and because he finds humor in it. Authors (and fans) argue a lot when it comes to which characterization is the best-fitting for the Joker, and, consequently, the only series that is taken as being the “truest” to characterizing him is the animated one, as it manages to balance his insanity, his showmanship, and his harmless pranks all at once.
CANON HISTORY: Ho-boy, this is going to get a bit tricky. Imagine, if you will, a down-and-out engineer-turned-comedian who’s life is slowly spiraling down, and down, and down into oblivion. He needs cash fast to support his pregnant wife, he needs to get some recognition to move on up in the world, and most of all? He needs respect -- this is where most authors who try to write the Joker’s history start when building a coherent “back-story” for him, even though by the Joker’s own admission sometimes he remembers his life one way, and sometimes he remembers it another way.
Whatever the case, the Joker’s definitive origin goes on as thus: after failing to support his wife as a comedian, he agrees to help two criminals break into the chemical plant where he once worked in an effort to get some fast cash. Things go smoothly at first, but during the planning process the Joker’s wife (and unborn son) are killed, which leads to the Joker having to be strong-armed into actually doing something because of his own reluctance. He is then tricked into donning the persona of “The Red Hood” so that it appears that he is the ringleader of the heist, and, after a disastrous shoot-out with the guards of the plant kills his two “flunkies,” tries to flee the scene of the crime only to find the Batman in his way. Terrified of what might happen to him, the man who would become the Joker tries to get the hell away from the Batman, slips in the process of doing so, and then falls into a the vat of chemicals that turns him into the Joker.
The rest is, as they say, history. The Joker is known to constantly lie and change his own origin story whenever he’s asked about it, and many writers make a point of noting that the Joker never tells the truth about anything relating to his past.
HOW DIFFERENT DO YOU WANT THE MEMORIES TO BE FROM THEIR CANON? Jack Napier grew up on the mean streets of Gotham city as an orphan, stealing to live and fighting to keep what was his. Without anyone to look out for him, he eventually fell in with the wrong crowd and turned into a sadistic, power-hungry gangster who worked his way up Gotham's criminal food chain until he was the leader of a powerful mob: the Kings. As leader of the Kings, however, he still sought the thrills that grunt-level work allowed, which brought on the creation of both the "Red Hood" identity and the creation of the "The Hoods," a rather small-time outfit that Jack ran with to complete dangerous, more "exciting" small-time crimes. Dressed up in a red and black three-piece suit, matching cape, and opaque red helmet, Jack would terrorize Gotham's night and days, stealing from whoever he wanted to until, eventually, the Batman intervened.
Here, Jack's life takes a turn for the strange -- after an intense shootout in which a wayward bullet catches him in the face, giving his a Glasgow Smile, Jack finds himself standing face to face with the near-mythic Dark Knight of Gotham. Bruised and bleeding, his gang either captured or running, he decides to take a chance and fight the one man courageous enough to try and put his goons and him in their place; this, unfortunately, results in Jack screwing himself over even further, as a misstep during an attempt to stab the Batman makes the gangster fly over the side of the railing they're both on, which dumps him into a vat of toxic chemicals.
He wakes up months -- or perhaps years -- later on the outskirts of New York with a notebook plopped into his lap.
PLANS FOR YOUR CHARACTER: Chaos. I've played the Joker twice before, and I've had to drop him due to time constraints, so I want to see if it'd be easier to play him in a slower-paced game.
SAMPLES LOG SAMPLE: He had arrived. That much was for certain. What wasn’t for certain was the where and the why, but he could worry about that later. Wherever he was, wasn’t anywhere near Gotham, though. He knew that much from how much the place smelled. Gotham had an aroma of…of life to it; through all of the chaos of the everyday, wherein the little man got stomped flat and the big men tore each others throats out, you could always hear the blood running through the streets when some Johnny-two-shoes got lucky with a pistol and the Batman was nowhere in sight.
Gotham just had that certain atmosphere to it.
This place didn’t. No siree and bob. Here…And there, and there, and everywhere he looked, he could only see how dead this place was. It was in the air, almost: a scent of putrescence and the dying, the dead, the diseased, the deceased, a rotting corpulence that had nothing to do with cultural stagnation or wealth. This place; this…where was he, exactly? It sure as hell wasn’t Gotham. And no Gotham, of course, meant no Bats, and no Bats meant no order, and no order meant that there was chaos. Chaos that he hadn’t sown, shared, or shoved onto people so that they could deal with themselves -- which bothered him. Really bothered him. If the chaos here hadn’t grown out from the muck and the darkness of people’s real hearts so that they would be given the strength to pick up a gun and blow their own brains out, then what good was it?
Amateur hour. That’s what this was.
Normal People had done this; which was, in and of itself, kind of funny: ya give someone a little push and they might do all the work for you, but in this case...well, it seemed like he had arrived before the big show had started, and the chaos here hadn’t been properly taken care of. Something was wrong. Very wrong; but, no matter -- he’d fix it. He’d fix aaaall of it, and then the people would thank him.
Or lynch him.
Whichever was best.
Or more entertaining.
Or easier.
This place wasn’t Gotham, though - no, no, no, no, no, no it was not. Which meant he had work to do. Lots of work. Without the Batman - which were, quite frankly, two words he never hopes to come true, because without a Bats there can be no Joker, you know? The world always need light and dark; up and down; peanut butter and mayonnaise - he was just…This place was too, too, too serious. He needed to change that. For the good of the people, of course. It was his calling! His duty! They'd love him for it.
So, when night settled, and the city seemed to sleep, Jack--he could only smile to himself and whisper a refrain.
“And I think to myself, oh, oh what a wonderful world…”
Because it would be. And no one but him would have to be so serious about it.
"Time to get to work."
JOURNAL SAMPLE:
[ Tap. Tap. Tap... ]
NoBatsnobatsnobats. Heaaahahahaha...HeaaaaHahahahaha Oh ho ho ho ha. hahahahahahahahaha...Ooohhohoha ha. Wooohohohohohoheh... HahahahahahaHahhahhahahahahahahahahahahee... And then the Jo~ker got a~way. hehehehehehehohohohohohohoh he he he he he he he AaaaaH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HEHHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA hA HA HA Ha HA ha ha ha HA HA Ha HA ha ha haha HUAAAAAAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAhahahahaha ha he he ho...Haaaaaa...
...Time to get to work.
NOTES: None.
AGE: 20
PERSONAL LJ: pridefall
EMAIL ADDRESS: meaculpable AT live DOT com
AIM SCREENAME: priestlyish
EXPERIENCE RPing: Several years
CHARACTER NAME: Jack "The Joker" Napier
CANON SOURCE: The Batman Mythos
TIMELINE: Detective Comics 655, shortly after being shot in the face.
CANON ABILITIES: Here
PERSONALITY: Christ, how do you even begin to define what an insane person’s true “personality” really is? The Joker is so mentally fractured that there is really no real way to just “explain” how he thinks in mere words, seeing as his level of insanity literally makes him create a new personality for himself every single day. The Joker is therefore never held as to having a static characterization in this respect, because no matter how badly an author mangles his base persona, any and every characterization of him can simply be explained away as being a “new personality.”
The “Core” of the Joker, however, never changes, and can be expressed as thus:
+ If it isn’t funny, then it isn’t worth doing. Make the unfunny funny to SOMEONE, always.
+ The Batman’s attention is the more important thing to have, and I will do anything to get it. Anything.
+ Life’s a stage, and the name of the play is “Chaos.”
From a literary standpoint, authors are usually divided into two “camps” regarding the Joker’s personality: on the one hand, the Joker can be interpreted and written as being nothing more than a sweet, if oft misguided "trickster" character who plays harmless pranks on people just for kicks, which is exactly what his Silver Age incarnation was. On the other hand, however, the Joker is written as an unrepentant sociopath who kills people just because he can and because he finds humor in it. Authors (and fans) argue a lot when it comes to which characterization is the best-fitting for the Joker, and, consequently, the only series that is taken as being the “truest” to characterizing him is the animated one, as it manages to balance his insanity, his showmanship, and his harmless pranks all at once.
CANON HISTORY: Ho-boy, this is going to get a bit tricky. Imagine, if you will, a down-and-out engineer-turned-comedian who’s life is slowly spiraling down, and down, and down into oblivion. He needs cash fast to support his pregnant wife, he needs to get some recognition to move on up in the world, and most of all? He needs respect -- this is where most authors who try to write the Joker’s history start when building a coherent “back-story” for him, even though by the Joker’s own admission sometimes he remembers his life one way, and sometimes he remembers it another way.
Whatever the case, the Joker’s definitive origin goes on as thus: after failing to support his wife as a comedian, he agrees to help two criminals break into the chemical plant where he once worked in an effort to get some fast cash. Things go smoothly at first, but during the planning process the Joker’s wife (and unborn son) are killed, which leads to the Joker having to be strong-armed into actually doing something because of his own reluctance. He is then tricked into donning the persona of “The Red Hood” so that it appears that he is the ringleader of the heist, and, after a disastrous shoot-out with the guards of the plant kills his two “flunkies,” tries to flee the scene of the crime only to find the Batman in his way. Terrified of what might happen to him, the man who would become the Joker tries to get the hell away from the Batman, slips in the process of doing so, and then falls into a the vat of chemicals that turns him into the Joker.
The rest is, as they say, history. The Joker is known to constantly lie and change his own origin story whenever he’s asked about it, and many writers make a point of noting that the Joker never tells the truth about anything relating to his past.
HOW DIFFERENT DO YOU WANT THE MEMORIES TO BE FROM THEIR CANON? Jack Napier grew up on the mean streets of Gotham city as an orphan, stealing to live and fighting to keep what was his. Without anyone to look out for him, he eventually fell in with the wrong crowd and turned into a sadistic, power-hungry gangster who worked his way up Gotham's criminal food chain until he was the leader of a powerful mob: the Kings. As leader of the Kings, however, he still sought the thrills that grunt-level work allowed, which brought on the creation of both the "Red Hood" identity and the creation of the "The Hoods," a rather small-time outfit that Jack ran with to complete dangerous, more "exciting" small-time crimes. Dressed up in a red and black three-piece suit, matching cape, and opaque red helmet, Jack would terrorize Gotham's night and days, stealing from whoever he wanted to until, eventually, the Batman intervened.
Here, Jack's life takes a turn for the strange -- after an intense shootout in which a wayward bullet catches him in the face, giving his a Glasgow Smile, Jack finds himself standing face to face with the near-mythic Dark Knight of Gotham. Bruised and bleeding, his gang either captured or running, he decides to take a chance and fight the one man courageous enough to try and put his goons and him in their place; this, unfortunately, results in Jack screwing himself over even further, as a misstep during an attempt to stab the Batman makes the gangster fly over the side of the railing they're both on, which dumps him into a vat of toxic chemicals.
He wakes up months -- or perhaps years -- later on the outskirts of New York with a notebook plopped into his lap.
PLANS FOR YOUR CHARACTER: Chaos. I've played the Joker twice before, and I've had to drop him due to time constraints, so I want to see if it'd be easier to play him in a slower-paced game.
SAMPLES LOG SAMPLE: He had arrived. That much was for certain. What wasn’t for certain was the where and the why, but he could worry about that later. Wherever he was, wasn’t anywhere near Gotham, though. He knew that much from how much the place smelled. Gotham had an aroma of…of life to it; through all of the chaos of the everyday, wherein the little man got stomped flat and the big men tore each others throats out, you could always hear the blood running through the streets when some Johnny-two-shoes got lucky with a pistol and the Batman was nowhere in sight.
Gotham just had that certain atmosphere to it.
This place didn’t. No siree and bob. Here…And there, and there, and everywhere he looked, he could only see how dead this place was. It was in the air, almost: a scent of putrescence and the dying, the dead, the diseased, the deceased, a rotting corpulence that had nothing to do with cultural stagnation or wealth. This place; this…where was he, exactly? It sure as hell wasn’t Gotham. And no Gotham, of course, meant no Bats, and no Bats meant no order, and no order meant that there was chaos. Chaos that he hadn’t sown, shared, or shoved onto people so that they could deal with themselves -- which bothered him. Really bothered him. If the chaos here hadn’t grown out from the muck and the darkness of people’s real hearts so that they would be given the strength to pick up a gun and blow their own brains out, then what good was it?
Amateur hour. That’s what this was.
Normal People had done this; which was, in and of itself, kind of funny: ya give someone a little push and they might do all the work for you, but in this case...well, it seemed like he had arrived before the big show had started, and the chaos here hadn’t been properly taken care of. Something was wrong. Very wrong; but, no matter -- he’d fix it. He’d fix aaaall of it, and then the people would thank him.
Or lynch him.
Whichever was best.
Or more entertaining.
Or easier.
This place wasn’t Gotham, though - no, no, no, no, no, no it was not. Which meant he had work to do. Lots of work. Without the Batman - which were, quite frankly, two words he never hopes to come true, because without a Bats there can be no Joker, you know? The world always need light and dark; up and down; peanut butter and mayonnaise - he was just…This place was too, too, too serious. He needed to change that. For the good of the people, of course. It was his calling! His duty! They'd love him for it.
So, when night settled, and the city seemed to sleep, Jack--he could only smile to himself and whisper a refrain.
“And I think to myself, oh, oh what a wonderful world…”
Because it would be. And no one but him would have to be so serious about it.
"Time to get to work."
JOURNAL SAMPLE:
[ Tap. Tap. Tap... ]
NoBatsnobatsnobats. Heaaahahahaha...HeaaaaHahahahaha Oh ho ho ho ha. hahahahahahahahaha...Ooohhohoha ha. Wooohohohohohoheh... HahahahahahaHahhahhahahahahahahahahahahee... And then the Jo~ker got a~way. hehehehehehehohohohohohohoh he he he he he he he AaaaaH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HEHHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA hA HA HA Ha HA ha ha ha HA HA Ha HA ha ha haha HUAAAAAAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAhahahahaha ha he he ho...Haaaaaa...
...Time to get to work.
NOTES: None.