Sunday, December 18th, The Midnight Channel

[thepull_mods]

Who: The Port's Latest Shadow Televisions Stars! And Thousands of Home Viewers!
When: Midnight, Sunday, December 18th
Where: In front of your Television Sets or Streaming NV TV. (Digital Cable? You'll still get the analog effect.)
Summary: Full Plot Details Here
Warnings: Please Put 'em In the Subject Lines As Necessary, Kids?

Comments

The Joker (Suggestive themes, standard Joker warnings)

[he_is_wild]

[The screen is filled with flickering static and this holds for quite some time. For a while, it seems like this might be all there is, but then an image, in black and white, and still static-filled, starts to appear.

There is a man sitting on a rock in the middle of a wide river. The water rushes past him and he shivers, curled in on himself. It is raining and the water soaks the man's hair. A sound manages to crack through the static. At first, it sounds like laughter but after a few moments it becomes clear that the sound is sobbing.

The man looks up, into the rain, showing the features of the Joker. But instead of his usual, feral appearance, he seems mournful, lost, and confused. He is naked but there is no sexual suggestion to his nakedness. He is vulnerable and exposed. Human.]

They look and don't see, hear without listening.

Just look at me!

Feel me! Don't just feel me, but really feel me.

[He tips his head back and lets out a strangled cry, clutching his chest in heartache. The rain and the river drown out his sobs and the static lapses back in on him wilting, stranded alone in the middle of the storm.]

[proxysearch]

[This is something she does see, wide-eyed and watching as she gets ready to hunt her own. She doesn't even know what to say. She's always known that he's sought attention, but even this is heart-wrenching.

No. That's not quite right. It's pathetic and it's sad. He could reform himself if he tried...and he doesn't want to. He's too far gone. This need for attention, these emotions, just drive him further to madness, despair, and homicide.

She feels no sympathy, though it's a sad display to see.]

reaction;

[he_is_wild]

[Joker stares glass-eyed at the screen then rises from his beanbag with a snarl.]

Some yutz blows up my backyard and now this. What a week.

[It's wrong. He's been hearing the news but this time it's wrong. That thing that is probably slithering around out there now has nothing to do with him. He's not a victim of the world, dammit. He embraces its cruelty. This isn't funny.]

[He grabs his pistol off the rickety coffee table, steps over Ollie and makes for the heavy door of the old personnel access tunnel.]

Be right back, boys, daddy's gotta go kakk off a doppleganger.

[kingofrooks]

[ It's a strange thing, this. Bruce hates it- hates the very sight of it even as he watches every second and commits it to memory, saves each frame into the computer. He hates it with a passion that is bitter at the back of his mouth, that sits on his tongue and stops him from speaking.

Yet at the same time he can't help but be thankful. He can't help but look and look and look at each plane and angle of that face, and pick out the vulnerabilities and humanity in it. This is why he will never kill this man. There is no sympathy within him, only a kind of grim determination at the sight.

There's still something within the Joker to be saved. He has to keep hold of that. He has to believe in it. Even though it would be so much easier to simply kill him and even though he hates the very idea that someone he despises so is still human- he holds onto that thought.

Joker is human. Joker can be saved.

And Batman won't kill him because of that. Not just because of his creed. ]

[unmantled]

[ He wants to turn it off. Wants to look away. Put it someplace else, in another context, anywhere where he won't have to see it again when he closes his eyes. ]