Another long wait because my schedule is all over the place but here we are again with a cliche plot that is used for almost all fanfics featuring Joker as the love interest.

Why does he even have to be the love interest is a good question altogether. Now before you Joker fans start to take out your bazookas, let me explain.

I am not saying that writing fanfics about the Joker is a bad idea. I am just saying that it is very important to decide the setting of your story and to acknowledge that most of the relationships with psychotic killers end up being abusive, manipulative and hella toxic.

And it's not a good idea to romanticize these relationships.

You can have a fanfic with the Joker as the love interest before he went down the hatch of craziness. Maybe explore the sort of back story that was shown in the Killing Joke or give the notorious clown prince a back story of your own by focusing on his life before becoming the Joker.

You can explore many possibilities with an OC who the Joker cared for but then lost her and other events also influenced in making him the clown prince of Gotham etc.

Anyways, enough of the pep talk, let's focus on the rest of the details.

OC's Personality And Traits:

1. The OC, let's call her Sally, is either another worker at Arkham (like a nurse or psychiatrist or anyone from the prison staff) or she is a fellow prisoner.

2. Usually, these stories follow the same arc of joker bewitching this naïve young girl and making her fall helplessly in love with him, so much so that she would do anything to help him.

3. So Sally usually doesn't have that strong of a personality to stand her ground against the Joker and falls in his trap of fake love.

[But sometimes way later on in the story, the author reveals that it wasn't just a trap of fake love, the Joker eventually fell in love with her for real and cue the happy ever after].

4. I seriously can't remember any other attributes Sally has. The only thing that matters is that she somehow caught the Joker's eye and he decided to keep her like a prize... And damage her in the process, obviously.

5. Being in love with Joker damages her physically and mentally but she is adamant on fixing him so she bears all the damage and continues on her journey to make him a better human being.

[Which again can be done well if you give time and detail to it but usually in these stories all the changes of being a better person either happen overnight or do not happen at all].

6. Regardless of the climax and the disturbing crap Joker puts Sally through, we get a very questionable happy ending.

[If you want to picture what it's like, you will find it in Suicide Squad's scene where the Enchantress was trying to trick Harley into joining her side].

Effects On Other Characters:

1. Since it's a Joker story, we see Joker going through a redemption arc after finding out that he loves Sally and can't live without her. So magically, he decides to turn over a new leaf and start life afresh with the love of his life by his side.

2. And Harley's character is either ignored from the start, doesn't exist, or she's the crazy ex girlfriend who ends up being the villain of the story just because she's so jealous that Sally and Joker got their happy ending.

3. Similarly, Batman is the big bad villain who either falls for Sally too and wants to save her from the Joker or just wants to ruin their lives. Even after Joker's so called redemption arc.

5. And if having Batman as the bad guy isn't intimidating enough, in comes a troop of other villains who are against the Joker just because he suddenly fell in love with a mere human girl and is now trying to change his ways.

***

Exception:

If you have any recommendations let me know but I haven't yet found a good fanfic on this trope. All the stories I have read are quite disturbing because either there is a lot of unwanted romanticism going on or they are just ignoring the possibility that the fairytale love story they are writing featuring a criminal is actually damaging to their OC (as well as young readers) on many levels.

We will be discussing it in detail in section two of this book when we come to romanticism and lack of realistic approach. All I can say for now is that pain isn't pretty and shouldn't be portrayed as such.

Being in a toxic and abusive relationship is not a fairytale and should NEVER be romanticized.

***

That's all for today. I really couldn't find much more material on this topic so this chapter might seem shorter compared to the previous ones.

See you with the next chapter.