all superheroes with secret identities are to an extent about being closeted and secreting part of your identity, which is gay, but like. batman is specifically about his identity in the closet where he dresses up in leather and engages in violent acts with groups of other men
every time joker puts a gun in his mouth. squirts his face with water. every time the riddler collars him. every time bane grips him by the throat, or croc pins him down, or penguin blows cigar smoke in his face, or ra's al ghul touches his jaw and talks about his potential
yes, obviously, he fucks women - he's public about that. bruce wayne, in fact, is very explicitly a womaniser in many adaptations. in the best of them, he's vapid and kind of a himbo, and women are charmed by his hapless appearances and unending niceness
and the thing is like. yes, bruce wayne is that kind. he is caring, he is compassionate - he notices the vulnerable and he wants to help; he listens to people, he remembers details, he's thoughtful.
and also he craves to hurt, and be hurt. he craves the strain in his body.
he aches for the scent of blood and sweat and oil and gunpowder; he wants to feel the bruises heal, wants to feel the itchiness of the healing cuts. he wants to be whipped. he wants to be beaten. he wants his knuckles to hurt from throwing so many punches.
it's not about justice. he beats up goons and tosses them in jail, and they go to jail, and then they come back and keep being goons. he puts the villains in an asylum that tortures them, and he visits the special cases. it doesn't help: that's not the point.
batman's obsession with joker is absolutely about joker's attraction to him and batman's attraction to joker but like. it's also about the fact that joker sees what he is - that he gets off on it. joker pushes him to the max bc he thinks it's funny to force him to admit it.
and the thing about arkham knight, or any other plotline where bruce becomes so obsessed with the joker that he hallucinates or imagines him is that like.
there are 3 people on earth who actually find the joker funny. one of them is the joker. SOMETIMES, another is harley
but the other one is batman. people who don't understand the batjokes dynamic (and crucially don't Get this as a crucial element of batman) don't understand that. batman finds the joker funny. and he feels so so fucking guilty for it. /but he keeps going back/.
batman's little fucking quips are the same as the joker's, he just puts on a deeper, grizzly voice. batman makes puns. batman makes lateral connections for the sake of terrible humour. he's deadpan and autistic and dry as dust, but he makes bad, bad jokes CONSTANTLY.
AND THIS IS WHY HE LAUGHS at joker like. that's what it is.
because this man's just. buried his identity four or five fucking personas deep. all his laughter is fake. most of his smiles are fake. humour is about the unexpected, and joker catches batman by surprise
it's not about joker being Good bc he isn't. the fact that joker is fucking irredeemable and cannot and will not be "fixed" is what makes him the same as batman. they both make choices to never be fixed. they don't want to be. they choose to be fucking clowns instead
