Debunking Arthur Fleck Fluff HC’s
As a reply to questions I have received about Arthur’s ideal partner, his mental state, living with him, and much more, here’s a little background to the darkness in my tales and some thoughts on the matters.
Oh, look, he’s so sweet. So romantic. Such a good boy. He would be such a great boyfriend, such a good partner, such a nice protective father. He just needs cuddles and lots of love.
Welcome to my *essay*.
Ever wondered why my depiction of Arthur Fleck is as gritty and dark as it is in some of my recent fics? Oh yes, I have written fluff and kind fics as well. But here are some reasons why I think that if Arthur Fleck were real, you’d better seek yourself a different guy to fall in love with.
1. Arthur Fleck’s mental health issue.
2. He is unpredictable.
3. He doesn’t see reality.
4. His humour is dangerous.
5. You would be emotionally and physically drained.
6. He murders people, including his own mother. What guarantee do you have he won’t kill you or your child?
7. And would you truly want a man like that to be the father of your children?
Warnings: This post contains sensitive content, such as topics of self-harm. Be aware of this and decide whether you wish to continue reading or click this away. This is purely explaining my own experiences and how they effect my view, explaining rather than convincing you how I got to this point of view I use in some of my darker fics.
1. Arthur has a real bad mental health issue, which is said to involve self-harm, negative thinking, hurting himself, hurting others, having delusions. Now why would that be a bad thing that you can’t overcome?
- I’ve seen a large amount of Joker fans on Tumblr thinking that if they were there, they could help fix Arthur. And perhaps, they could. If they can, Arthur would not transform into Joker. But realistically, he would still need to take his medicine every day to keep his mindset as docile as it is at the start of the film.
_ > Dangers: People who are on meds for their mental health have the tendency to, once they feel normal and happy, stop using their medicines and have a relapse. Which is very hard to see and you will have to use all your energy to help them back on track.
_> A medicine can stop working. A mum of a friend of ours had this happen to her, where she became immune to her meds and had tried so many, some being taken off the market, others losing their effect after months or years of usage. She was tired of having to go through the whole process of finding a new one that worked. When it stopped being effective, she killed herself.
_> A medicine can be taken off market. And whenever something happens to the meds, will your love be enough to keep Arthur standing tall? Because it might be bad luck, but the instances I have seen where people have had a serious case of reoccurring depression, or borderline syndrome, it always ended with the loved ones, despite giving it their all (their time, losing their jobs loving and taking care of them, their money, all of their possessions, their body and their soul, giving up friendships, other family members and what not), only to end up with it never being enough.
That is to say, yes, there are many different mental conditions and each has different levels of severity. That is to say, every level can be severe, but while some give hope that the person suffering from it can function normally, or can find happiness, I think with all that the film has shown us, Arthur is at such a stage that we can assume it will not be cured miraculously. And you should wonder if anything you do could ever be enough.
2 & 3. He’s unpredictable.
This is part of his mental health issue. He has delusions as we noticed from the film. He doesn’t see reality. He imagines an entire relationship with his neighbour, who makes it quite clear she hardly knows the guy.
_> Danger: No matter what you do, you have no grip on the image he has of you in his mind. His reality differs from whatever it is you do. It will put you in immediate danger.
– Now why is this a terrible, terrible problem? Someone very close to me has mental issues and delusions. So I have first-hand experience. It is frightening! For years on end I have been careful about what to say, never to say something that will upset them, always say yes to whatever suggestion they give. Even if it ruins your own life. Even if they tell you all sorts of things that are wrong with you, or with people you love. You accept it out of fear because they are so instable and you want to help them forward. To give them the space they need, to look after them in times of need. And it is FRIGHTENING. Because this person I know changes personalities as well. In a way that we can argue Arthur changes personalities when he becomes Joker, but this person I know has over ten personalities and you never know who is coming out next. One personality is capable of doing normal grown-up things, the next is a small child, but all of them are angry, jealous and mean. -> Which is a big difference with Arthur. Let me make it clear now, I don’t think Arthur falls in this multiple personality disorder category. There’s a clear transition between him and Joker, possibly helped by the lack of medicine available and the effects of it waning. Arthur is unstable and unreliable because of what his own mind makes him perceive, not necessarily for being different personalities in one body.
To expand on my personal experience: This person imagines the weirdest and scariest things and to them, this is reality. Now this person is a very extreme case I won’t expand on, but they see things that didn’t happen. In a quiet room, they imagine a fight. People talking about the weatherforecast are in their mind plotting this persons death. Someone showing kindness is often in their mind someone doing something horrid or lewd and they can flip about it and shout, and throw stuff, and cause a whole scene.
So yes, no matter how kind you will be to Arthur Fleck, if his reality of you watching television is a contorted delusion of you telling him you want to walk out on him, and he places you inside his ‘bad people’ box, you might be up next for the chop. It’s how family drama’s occur, it’s one of the reasons why some people kill their loved ones because they don’t want them to get together with someone else, or live without them. Only, you don’t even have to actually want to walk away from him. He just needs to imagine it and your safety is gone.
Another thing I like to think this person I know and Arthur might have in common is the obsessive and possessive way they would deal with partners. This person slowly made a web around their partner, isolating them from friends and family, making them even have to give up their job for them. They control their mobile, their email, stalk them online, send messages out of their partner’s name. Nothing that reaches the partner hasn’t run by this person, and this person takes their partner out of groups without telling them. They control everything of this persons live, and it grew so silently, so slowly, that the partner didn’t notice until it was too late. And now the partner doesn’t care. No one matters to them, no one except this person who they try with all their might to keep happy.. Which is incredibly sad. Because we can see the partner fading away, ill, unwell, with little to no joy left. And that is the bleak reality I have been faced with and still am faced with. And which I can’t ignore when looking at Arthur. The idea that he too could and would slowly create a web around the one who has taken his fancy, isolates them, makes them dependant and care only for his well-being.
4. A sign why he is dangerous. His jokes include murder, giving a glimpse of his brain. And though some might find his morbid humour funny, how would you feel if you were happily married, had a beautiful son you loved dearly, and someone would say “knock knock, your son is dead” and hold up the dead body of your son. Because think about it, his humour isn’t just humour. His humour is part of his fantasy, it is part of what he starts doing. It is a mirror of the darkness in his mind. And we have seen reasons why the murders he commit can be ‘justified’. But if you have to be realistic, can any murder be justified? A murder is still a murder, still bad. He still kills people. People we happen to know little about except that they took the piss off someone (or did they? read the note underneath this paragraph). But they have family members, friends, a mother and father. They have people who love them, who wait for them at home. How would you feel if your child, your brother or sister, your best friend, your lover, would not arrive home one day because someone thought they were bad because they …let’s say… accidentally bumped against them in the street, or happened to look them in the eye, and were killed for it because the one they bumped against or looked at thought it was his right to do so. You would not laugh about it. You would be fucking livid.
- note: As the film is an account by Arthur, do we even know if the guys on the train actually abused him? What if they were just minding their own business and Arthur imagined being struck down by them? I mean, we do see bruises on his body, but it is his ambiguous account. Has anyone considered the possibility that the abuses took all place in Arthur’s head and he killed these men because of his own fantasy running wild and dark and morbid? I don’t think it went this way (I mean, there’s the textual evidence of Arthur having been abused in the past and what-not), but suppose for a moment that even that evidence is what came from his mind as he tells the tale, his reality. In a way we can’t trust anything that we’ve seen in the film…..
5. Ever lived with a borderliner? Then you will know how draining it is emotionally and physically. (Now, if you are diagnosed or consider yourself a borderliner don’t instantly take offence. I am talking about severe cases here, and as always there are gradations. And I do hope for you and everyone who loves you that your gradation isn’t as bad as the one I am about to describe. And if it feels it is, know you ARE LOVED.) Because if you know Borderliners you know this: They are usually the most glorious people you’ll ever meet. They shine bright, you can’t help but to instantly fall in love with them. And as such, I have never understood why they feel the need to be this self-destructive or why they never seem to understand how much they hurt all those around them who love them. But I’m not here to dwell on the hows and why’s and my own thoughts and experiences in this. I bring this up because people who are self-destructive, they suck the energy out of their loved ones. Or rather, if you love someone who wants to hurt themselves, it is emotionally draining. Because every time they want to hurt themselves, it feels like you failed, like you are not enough to them either. You can try to help them, keep them on track, and they can use your energy to keep standing. And with some people it works, with others unfortunately not as much. But now take Arthur Fleck who is an extreme case. He wants to hurt himself as well. You need to keep in mind that you will have to use every trick up your sleeve to stop him. Often. It can be little things as well. It can just be that he feels down and you have to tell him things to make him see the bright side again. But keep in mind, this won’t be once. This might be several times a day. It can be he has had a delusion that upsets him. You will have to put time and energy in to get him out of his dark mindset continuously. And if he’s anything like people I have experienced in the past, you might expect for him to bring extra drama when you’ve gone out and have a fun day, or part of a day, without him. Because he will be jealous, or feel left out, and he will probably have ruined the pans in the kitchen and burnt his own food and without words show you that you actually can’t leave. He might make hurtful or embarrassing comments when other people are around and his behaviour might scare of others, slowly isolating you from your friends. Until you are dependent on him, and constantly busy with him. And constantly trying to help him exist, and be sort of normal and sort of happy. Or in the worst case, you are constantly trying to keep all triggers away that will make him relapse and fall back into his dark thoughts. From experience, you’d think no one can handle that for long. But reality is that quite often, they persist, because they love the other THAT MUCH. Even if the one they love doesn’t understand, doesn’t seem to see, how much they sacrifice for them. But almost always they stick together till the end. And people can last for years like this. Years and years. It would count for you too. Once you’re in, you don’t want to get out because of your love for him. But you are constantly tired, you are isolated, you miss all the opportunities life offers you, you are always setting aside everything to make sure Arthur won’t flip. And even then, he flips. Constantly. But you don’t see how odd the live is that you stumbled into. After several years of slowly slipping into this life, you don’t see reality anymore. You don’t see what you miss. You are just surviving. And taking his hand to survive along.
That is what I have seen and still see. That is the basis on which I analyse a character like Arthur Fleck. That is why I can’t imagine you could have a truly happy ever after with him.
6. But worse than what I am witnessing in real-life, where the person I know who reminds me of Arthur’s mental quirks a lot is known for talking about murder, is the fact that we know Arthur Fleck is actually capable of it. And we also know that no matter what you do, if something in his brain makes the flip and he suddenly thinks bad of you, you might be up the chopping block next. This has nothing to do with whether or not he loves you. At this point we assume his love for you is real, it is strong, it is probably a lot like an obsession because once he has found you he doesn’t want to let you go again. And if he so much suspects you want to leave him, he might just make the choice that you won’t get away from him. Or if he thinks you have turned against him, what then? So consider this, are you truly save with this man? Because I don’t think you are.
7. Now, you have chosen to risk all above. You help Arthur take his meds and they work. He is sort of stable. He has his occasional sudden outbreaks where he is upset, tries to harm himself, laughs uncontrollably, and if he’s fine he makes morbid jokes. And you want a family with him because hormones and all of that stuff.
Now imagine you are a child and you grow up in this small flat.
Imagine it like this: You grow up. Now replace Arthur as your father with someone you don’t find physically attractive. Replace him with your own real life dad for instance. Imagine that you are born from your actual parents, but you live in a crappy small flat and your father wastes his money mostly on cigarettes (so the place stinks, but hey, if you can stand it kuddos). Imagine that your father has this laugh like Arthur, whenever he is upset. It comes out at random and sometimes unexpected times. And since you grew up with it, it frightens you, because it means your father is either sad or angry. And a kid’s initial reaction is they want their parents to be happy, so if a parent cries they cry along. It’s imbedded in children. Your father being upset upsets you too. He’s unpredictable and suffers from moodswings. One moment, he smiles at you and says he is proud of something you did, the next he is angry and shouting.
Sometimes he snaps at you for something you didn’t do.
A lot of the times he ignores you as he’s caught up in his own mind.
When you are smaller, it is easier for him to be around you and he doesn’t show his ugly side as much, but when you grow older it gets worse. He is so familiar with you and your mom that he shows his bad side, his sadness, his irrational side, all of it, whenever he wants to.
How will that make you feel? Scared? Uncertain? Not worthy perhaps, because of the way he snaps at you and blames you for things you didn’t do? Scared to say the wrong thing, to react in the wrong way. But as you grow up you discover that there is no right way to say things. When he is in one of his moods whatever you say is wrong, because a lot of the things are going on in his mind and he won’t or can’t share them with you. Sometimes you think he doesn’t like you because he’s distant, you can’t get him to respond to you and you might think he ignores you. He puts a lot of attention on himself with his unpredictable mood changes and the way he can be very dramatic about wanting to die, which can come out of nowhere and gives you the feeling you, as a kid, are not good enough. And it SUCKS. It sucks to feel that way. To be scared of your own parent all of the time. To be scared of what you say to him, what you do.
But the bright side, when you grow older you recognise parts of him in you. And if you can get through to him, he will recognise them too. And when you reach your twenties you’ll be able to talk. At first, it won’t be easy. But when it is, it is because you say you understand how he feels and you describe it to him so well, he believes you are pretty much a failure like him. He will say so in his own words. And you will accept it, but you won’t think you are a failure. Not anymore. Because you learnt how upsetting his behaviour can be, and you’re determined not to be that way. You show some of the symptoms, but not nearly as bad as him. And he reflects himself on you, thinks you are worse than you are, sees himself when he looks at you and takes it for a fact. Another of his delusions in which you play along because finally, finally, you two can connect.
You’d be so thrilled to leave the house and move to a place of your own.
- Accept the fact that you can’t change Arthur, which also means you can’t erase his negative thoughts.
- Would you be safe in this relationship? If you can’t control the reality he makes in his mind, and he actually starts murdering people, who can guarantee he won’t kill you next?
- Even if you don’t care dying by his hands, the relationship will probably be physically and emotionally draining for you.
- Still want to settle down? Do the test: Imagine your own father in Arthur’s role, behaving his way.
In conclusion: I don’t think anyone would live a happy live with Arthur Fleck. I think probably the most stable relationship, that will last the longest and have some semblance of a happy life, would be with a partner who is quiet, innocent, unexperienced, and who would sacrifice everything to keep him from tumbling into his dark mind. And he will tumble, even with all the best efforts. And it will still be a tiring, numbing and draining experience. But such relationships do exist in the real world, and unfortunately, I am still witnessing one that has been going on for years. And that’s why, I can’t see, from this distance, how anyone would be happy with the character of Arthur Fleck. He is too far gone.
On the aspect of love: I feel I need to make it clear that love is, in all cases above, not a point of issue. Love will not diminish because someone has troubles of body or mind. For this, I imagined the love between Arthur and the other, both-sided. And no matter the hardships, I believe that once love is there it won’t falter. By the way he might ensnare you it might even feel as if it’s deepened, strengthened. And if you recognise yourself in some of the points I have mentioned above but struggle with yourself or your feelings, then know that no matter what ails you, there will always be someone who can love you, and health issues don’t equal the end of relationships. Not at all. From what I have seen, most partners stick by their loved one till the end. So don’t ever think that you could not find love for having a ‘fault’, or for simply being somehow different.
On my personal view of Arthur: He is still hot as f*ck though and I understand fully why people wanna tap that arse >) Arthur Fleck is a character that has not only his appearance going for him, but also all the mystery and complexity that make him interesting to write, read and fantasize about. Joaquin brought something alluring to the character, not just by the dubious glances and the paradoxical character he is playing (sweet and helpful caretaker versus revenge seeking murderclown), but the fraility of his character, both his emaciated body and his compassionately brought complicated emotions, are enough to lure anyone in. Because he makes us believe he is vulnerable. And he makes us want to get out there and hug him. While at the same time, all of us know that he can stand up for himself and that he is stronger than you would have given him credit for at the start of the film. And I believe, his character of Arthur Fleck / Joker would be stronger than most of us clown lovers. But that will not detain me. And I will continue to write about him doing smutty things and stuff, just because I can. And I will fantasize good things happening to him, and him being fluffy and ok as well, and write that down too. But in reality, we all know it probably wouldn’t be ok. Hence why I bestow you a few Dark Arthur Fics to balance against the pile of fluff I occassionally drown myself in. We can’t take just the good side of him, when there’s the complicated less prettier side to take into account as well. And perhaps, perhaps I can show us that we can love him for it just the same. We’ll see….
And now I pose the question to you:
We base a lot in life on assumptions. We are extra sensitive to the emotions of those we love the most. Keeping all this in mind, Can you truly be happy with Arthur Fleck?
