The best Joker is the woman Joker who snaps after a lifetime of being told to "smile, baby" by shitty men

Last week, Geraldine DeRuiter tweeted a short, sharp alternate character arc for The Joker: "The Joker should have been a woman. And she finally went insane because too many random dudes told her to smile, so now she perpetually smiles while terrorizing Gotham."

The tweet went viral, and immediately, DeRuiter's mentioned filled up with entitled manbabies who were angry that a woman had reminded them that women get a lot of public harassment, effectively giving her the same origin story that her notional Joker had, should she decide to launch a life of crime.

The thing is, DeRuiter's Joker origin story is much better than the traditional Joker tale: "The original origin story for the Joker usually involves him having one bad day. A whole lifetime of systemic misogyny is a much better reason for snapping."

DeReuiter's longer rumination on her Joker experience -- including the circumstances of her original tweet, which arose after an epically terrible day was interrupted by some random asshole who shouted across a hotel lobby at her ("Awwww, thats way too serious a face!") -- lacks the compactness of her original post, but makes up for it with some real insight into the Batman canon, its relationship to gender, and directions for better superheroes in the future.

UGH JUST WRITE NEW STORIES, WHY DO WE NEED TO REWRITE THE OLD ONES?

This argument is interesting to me, because its not a zero-sum game. New stories are important. New art is important. Celebrating the work of artists whose work has not been given the amount of credit or attention it deserves is a wonderful thing.