*After proofreading this just as I've stopped crying and have kinda come down from the sadness, what i wanted to say is that Heath inspired the most important parts of me, and with his Joker came all of these stories, and my passion for writing. I found it actually rather difficult to talk about Heath here- it's honestly just a stream of thought and as usual, the Joker completely steals it- but know that he is on my mind every day, and 10 years is so painfully long for such an amazing person to be lost. I miss him a lot. I miss him a big heckin lot.

I've tried to keep this 'tribute' positive. I've tried to keep this almost-eulogy inspirational and heartfelt and motivational. I've rewritten it almost five times now and this is my sixth and hopefully final attempt. I just can't lie anymore. I can't pretend like we all don't know Heath and how goddamn much he means to me and every single one of you reading this- I just can't be fake and make a perfect speech, split into perfect paragraphs, almost outlining his life. Fuck this, man. I'm in pain. I'm hurting so, so much, and although I know this is about celebrating his life, I'm in mourning. I'm keeping this tribute true, and I'm going to spill my heart out (but not all of it).

Behold; the insane and extremely lengthy ramblings of a girl who fell in love with a dead man.

Today has been one of the bleakest, strangest days of my life. To summarise it, I attended the funeral of my step-grandfather, but I did not mourn him. Yes, I know that sounds cruel, but hear me out. We just really weren't that close and I barely knew him, plus he came from my step-father's side, a man whose verbal abuse has been one of the main sources of my social anxiety for years- so I suppose it's difficult to really let the death of someone who was sort of just a background thought affect me much. Still, I hope he's resting well.

Back to the point. Of course I knew that today would be the anniversary of Heath's passing, and it was only sick coincidence that it fell on the day I was attending a funeral. So I should be mourning the death of two people, right? My step-grandfather and Heath. Sat there in the front pew of the chapel, I ended up just... staring off at the abundance of flowers next to this dead man's coffin, his eternal tomb, and I began to drown in the complete tranquility of disassociated silence. And I mourned. Quietly, and without crying, I mourned in my own head, disjointed from the world entirely. Followed by a wake at a local pub where I just kept drinking vodka-cokes to quiet my own thoughts (lightweight teen over here), I was just dying to go home. This wasn't the funeral I wanted to attend.

Now I know that all that sounds extremely selfish- and don't worry, I'm getting to Heath in a minute- but I've never really had the misfortune of dealing with a lot of close relative deaths. I can't even name more than three relatives that I'm actually close to. I've just always kept to myself, write, done my own thing and minded my own business. Anyone close to me had died when I was such a young age that I can hardly remember what loving them even felt like. God, I must sound so fucking bitter. I do have a soul, by the way, please believe me.

But anyway, I have this tradition where I buy a white candle for Heath and I light it two days a year: once on his death anniversary and once on his birthday. I've done so since 2015, even though I've of course known him for a little longer than that.

Again, I'll get to Heath in a minute, but I just have to talk about the Joker for a second.

I understand that a lot of people like Ace of Spades, and, though I've grown out of it (it's so cliché how do u not even see omg), I'll never take it down. That story was written at a time where I needed it, where I needed the Joker, where I needed a place to run to. Ace of Spades was written entirely out of raw and unfiltered love (even though my thoughts on his character has now evolved and I realise that he was very uncharacteristic in that story). Even so, the Joker has been the backbone of my sanity, as ironic as that sounds. And yes, I know, I sound completely fucking nuts.

I've always been the quiet one of any group; of my family, of my friends, of my class, etcetera. Like a lot of writers I have an extremely vivid imagination, and with that comes an obsession with fiction: like books, video games and movies. I cherish these so, so much, but like... I've never found anything like the Joker. See, I tend to go through phases when I become obsessed with something. That certain obsession will most likely last a year at most, and then, over time, becomes a forgotten embarrassment or a relic of nostalgia. The Joker? Five years now, going on six. And it still feels like I'm in the honeymoon phase.

Yeesh, I make it sound so dramatic. Idk though. Sometimes, when you just find that thing, y'know, that thing, you latch onto it with every bit of strength you have; it makes you feel in such a different, surreal way, sometimes not even happy. But it just makes you feel, and you feel so strongly and so passionately that no matter what happens that thing will always be your thing. That's the Joker to me. He's the most precious diamond in the most roughest of places.

And yes, I get it, he's awful. I know he's a piece of shit. The Joker really shouldn't ever be romanticised. I don't think he's some kind of perfect messiah or some misunderstood villain- I'm literally the president of the Joker's a Piece of Human Garbage club (so write him that way dammit!!!) Loving him isn't even in a romantic way much (though i do have a huge crush eek), loving him is just being fascinated with the abstract and anarchic horror of his ways.

[I'm sorry, I'll talk about that another time. I've been planning to publish a 'book' on Wattpad where I just publish rants and analyses and stuff, random stuff about the Joker, seeing as I do it so much on my profile page and in the author's notes anyway. Just a book where I can just initiate a conversation and we can all discuss in the comments, which is always my favourite part... let me know what you think about that, haha. (Please say yes i honestly just want an excuse to talk ab the joker literally uhhhhh forever)]

I keep going off track. What I'm trying to say is, 2017 was honestly the year I fell in love with the Joker all over again. I fell in love with Gotham, the idea of Gotham, and oh my goodness, finding the Dark Knight marketing campaign was one of the most enjoyable things I'd discovered all year. 2017 was such a dark year for me, where my mental health was/is at its worse, and writing him became a kind of therapeutic purging ritual. There's much more about that and how it all inspired me to write the Joker, and how else I fell in love, but that's not important. What's important is that Heath somehow brought this character to life, created a new entity entirely, and I fell so in love with the complexity of this vivid mind, just some psychotic clown, that Heath's death hits me so much deeper, so much harder, a twisted blade stuck in my gut that just won't. Stop. Cutting. The world ripped away a part of me before I even knew it existed.

If you're around the same age as I am, then chances are you had little or no idea at all who Heath Ledger was at the time of his death. I sure didn't. I was seven and a half years old, probably in the back of my classroom reading some Jacqueline Wilson book, unbeknownst entirely to his existence. Just how... awful. Who'd've thought, that one of the most important and dearest people in my life now, barely stirred a hiccup in me when he passed away? I had no idea that he existed. I had no idea that Heath existed. I had no idea that the Joker, for five mere minutes, in the pages of a journal and onscreen, existed. My whole world was over before I even knew it belonged to me.

We all know that Heath is honestly one of the most powerfully beautiful minds of our generation, if not in the entire grand scheme of all centuries past. I get that everyone knows him as the Joker- so did I- but to discredit everything else... what about the melancholic poet he played in Candy, or the fun-loving badboy in 10 Things? What about his art, his photography, athletic skill and intelligence? He was a writer, an actor, a director... he breathed such vivid life and such profound beauty into this world through his imagination, that to just call him 'the guy who played the Joker' is awful. That's the tragedy of it all. I love the Joker more than anything in the world, truly, but Heath was a wonderful, wonderful man, a human being with such charm and talent and such a divine way of thinking and seeing the world around him that to discredit him as being some dead actor- it leaves a taste in my mouth so sour that I can hardly bear to speak. And because he created the Joker- someone who at most times I regard as a separate person entirely because not only is he so convincingly different, but I love them at extremes that are total opposites on the spectrum- because of Heath, my love of writing flourished into something I am so proud of. The Joker is honestly a muse of sorts, God, his character is so ripe with possibility. He's endless. I've stated this in the updates on my profile but time and time again, just as I think I've discovered everything, just as I think I've found everything about him that the world possibly has to offer me, I squeeze tightly and all these theories and thoughts and little traits and tics I overlooked ooze out like honey into my hands, and suddenly I'm stuck to the keyboard again, writing him over and over and over. Forever.

How on earth Heath managed to accomplish the birth of a new person entirely in the form of the Joker, who has less than an hour of screen time, is beyond me. It's when the lines between Heath and the Joker start to blur, that his death pains me more, because it's as if when that last scene plays, with the Joker swinging from the scaffold rooftops of Pruitt Building, Midtown Gotham, once he coughs out his last laugh... that's it. With Heath's death, the Joker is gone too. The Joker's lifespan lasted a whopping 33 minutes and a few seconds, and now he's gone. It sounds so stupid, but in my head it makes sense, I guess. The fact that we were expected another movie with him starring as the Joker again really rubs the salt much deeper into the wound, since outside of those 33 minutes there could've been so much more, so many different faces and tics and his voice, oh God, his voice... you realise, that along with Heath's untimely passing, the Joker's life was cut short, too? The Joker's dead. Maybe I'm just unhealthily obsessed with the character, but Jesus Christ. When you've been writing him from, like, age 12, you grow attached to the guy. Shit. It's like I've lost two people, because that Joker, my Joker, is never coming back. Just like Heath.

To make that story short, I bought a purple candle for the Joker too. Call me crazy, I literally don't care. I'm in so much anguish right now. I know he's fictional but writing him for so long has made him a part of me that, along with Heath, I am NEVER letting go of.

It's why I can appreciate other Jokers, (though I have a huge grudge against Leto's but if I truly speak my mind the backlash is gonna be one HELL of an avalanche) but never like, love them to the extent that I love Heath's Joker. I mean if we're gonna be corny about it then to quote the new testament, Joker 23:15, "you complete me". Lmao but really if it weren't for Heath and the dedication he put into making the Joker, this account wouldn't even exist. I probably wouldn't write as much, or at least not with the effort I put into it that I do now. Suppose that's why I feel so strongly about the way I write the Joker, and about portraying him as honestly and in character as possible (AoS isn't the best example of that but hhhh). It's because in a way, even without realising sometimes, I'm trying to revive him.

I'm trying to fit my stories, most notably Apples, into the canon of the Nolanverse trilogy. I know I take a long heckin time to update it but it's just because I can't publish something that I'm not proud of, I can't publish something that doesn't do the Joker justice. I don't think many people are gonna predict how Apples ends... even I was surprised when I finally figured out what the ending was gonna be, literally last week while I was showering. I never know where the Joker's character takes me, but where I'm taking him, I PROMISE- I will do him justice. This is a facet of his personality that I have never thought about before. It all really goes against the philosophies of his character I enjoy most (again, check my profile, scroll down a bit and you'll find a long ass rant where i just go off about him), but I'm so goddamn excited to explore it. I'm just a little kid wandering the maze of his psyche, endlessly. So even if it takes a decade to finish, Apples is gonna be something I'm proud of.

In a way, I hope Heath would be proud of it too.

-tkj