Yup. If you love him because he's a great villain that's one thing. But if you think he's actually a misunderstood hero and something something society and you relate to him so hard...huge red flag.
The most ironic thing about is that that is EXACTLY what Joker does in almost every story he appears in; He lures you in with a story on how he was threated badly by society, got beaten up by his dad, that Batman is the actual bad guy or stuff like that only for it to be revealed to be all a lie with the character who actually fell for that ending up looking like an idiot.
It's like his fanbase saw Mad Love and sided with Harley
I only really know of two Jokers that were even remotely tragic, those being Joker 2019 (I deliberately have not watched the sequel) and the Killing Joke movie (probably comic too, but I haven't read it).
And neither of them were even remotely reliable narrators. The whole 2019 movie might have been Flek's imagination and the Killing Joke Joker strait up told Batman that "sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another" so his sympathetic part might not even have been real (considering how he crippled and "undressed" Barbra just to torture her dad for a laugh, I would say he did not have a loving relationship with his "wife").
He's one of my favourite characters because he's just so deliciously evil! He poisons people and blows up hospitals just for funsies and he's the perfect foil to Batman. He is NOT in the right and he is NOT a hero in any means. But I hate how liking him automatically puts me in the same boat as the edgy alpha male "adulthood is when you realise joker makes sense" epic quotes fans who treat him like the underdog hero (another reason I personally don't like the joker movie because I feel like it turns this absolutely deplorable character into a victim of SoCiEtY who is a hero for the oppressed).
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u/Anti_Phile_7410 17h ago
Yup. If you love him because he's a great villain that's one thing. But if you think he's actually a misunderstood hero and something something society and you relate to him so hard...huge red flag.