The Joker

The Joker is an original Batman villain. He is famous for his clown/jester motif, and his passion for lunacy and chaos. He was the Batman's nemesis, and has since lost much meaning for himself after Batman's disappearance. The fear his name inspires has been diminishing rapidly, and he does little to counter it.

Appearance and Personality
The Joker’s appearance is, unsurprisingly, based off of jesters and the like. He always viewed himself as a trickster, and played up the look as best he could. He created the persona of the Joker during Batman’s time -- wearing mismatched and overly pompous clothing. He dyes his hair green, and dons very professionally done harlequin style makeup that manages to mostly stay put while he is out wreaking havoc (He must have learned from the Homestuck people.). As much as he says he cares for chaos and randomness, he puts a great deal of effort into his look, including doing dumb things like constantly eating bright red cherry candies to make his mouth look redder.

The Joker has the attention span of a child. He is constantly looking for entertainment now that Batman is gone, and often finds very little point in doing anything without the Bat. He misses and glorifies the days of classic villains, especially when he fails at finding entertainment with the new ones. In his past, he was very confident and good-humored, comfortable with the status of his name creating obedience and fear from others.

These days, he serves to keep the plot moving, and randomly appears wherever he is needed. While he laughs frequently, as fitting with his character, but it is rarely a genuine laugh. His reaction to nearly every emotion has become laughter -- to the point where he has forgotten how to react normally. He becomes disgruntled and irritated by displays of these emotions, and will either force the person to act more cheery, or leave suddenly.

Cate Hunter and Ash Sheridan
The Joker's first appearance is after Ash Sheridan reunites with Cate Hunter. He is mentioned by several other characters before this, as many people have been affected by his crimes in one way or another. The Joker appears to have stolen an expensive car from someone, and runs into (not quite literally) Sheridan and Hunter. He decides to kidnap them, but as that scenario was written so long ago and was completely improbable, it's being ignored. So basically the two get away at some point, and Sheridan decides to reverse the roles by kidnapping Joker. He's forced to live in a closet in her house for a while. He doesn't like it.

Truce With The Joker
Sheridan realizes that making enemies with the Joker is really not a good idea, and decides to let him go. The Joker really thinks this whole thing, and her, is dumb, but since she has ignored him for so long, he is fatigued from undernourishment. He listens to Ash Sheridan (henceforth called Red) and Aleenya Moss' (henceforth called Blue) dumb proposal for peace, though he is somewhat interested in hearing about their attack on the business square of the city. It gives him the idea of imitating past villains to try and bring a hero back. Regardless of the dumbness, Joker agrees to not kill them, but insists that they are in his debt, and have to do a favor for him at some point later. He has not yet called in this favor. After that, they try and sedate him to make sure he doesn't know how to get back to the house. He thinks that's funny and plays along. Whoops.

The Partnership Ends
Sick of no longer being plot relevant, (and finding that taking care of pets is boring) the Joker knocks on the door of Cate Hunter's apartment. He has decided to try and corrupt her to the ways of evil by convincing her to break Red out of Arkham. Considering their past, Cate isn't really all that willing to listen to what he has to say, but seems somewhat swayed when he points out that Red has personally attacked her doctor before, and Arkham wouldn't stop him from hurting her. When he later checks up on her interest, she makes the mistake of explaining that she's meeting a friend at a certain time.

Well, the Joker decides to show up right at that time and rope Izzy Tennant into the plan as well. Cate does not like this, but then if she wanted him to play nice she should have listened to his schedule. Izzy quickly agreed to helping Red, which made Cate much more agreeable. The Joker only semi, and haphazardly, trains them to not get caught during their raid, but mostly just throws them into it.

The Joker gets them inside, and has Cate set the security on loop while Izzy goes and gets their captured friend, and the addition of Blue. He wanders off while the cameras are out to do his own shenanigans, but ends up meeting Izzy, Cate, Red and Blue at the end of it all. He hitchhikes with everyone else to Red's house again, where he is somewhat amused at Red's reaction to the fact that he knew where she lived the whole time and took care of her pets. And left the door unlocked.

He is present for the argument that makes Red and Blue separate. He doesn't interfere because he knows that they would both probably blame him, and it is much more fun to watch them ruin a good thing. He is also forgotten again, which is useful since Red leaves him in her house without thinking about it. ..Whoops.

He also stays in Red's house in order to have a place to crash for a while, and also to watch the drama ensue. She doesn't do anything to make him leave so he freeloads for a while.

Scarlett Jaide Takes Hostages
The Joker has fun watching Red flounder with saving her friends from Saint Scarlett Jaide. He particularly enjoys giving useless commentary, and filling her head with all the worst case scenarios. He also likes that he is going to get the house to himself again after she goes and gets caught to save them. But then she comes back with Blue and he knows that he's not going to get that chance again. Sigh.

A Bunch of Other Plot Developing Devices
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Mob Life
The Joker’s name was Jack Gildenshire. The Gildenshires were a dangerous and powerful family, known to be the attack dogs of the Maroni crime syndicate. As such, they held a protected status among the citizens of Gotham who were not involved in the gang wars. While participating in the wars, they would do gruesome things to Falcone enemies, which garnered fear from the civilians, and horrified many others.

Jack was quite satisfied with his prospective life in the mob. He got close to the head of the Maroni family, and quickly learned the sort of personality that could lead the mob to greater gains. He was known to have a very good-natured attitude, and loved to crack jokes. This make him popular among the mobsters, as well as his classmates.

He impressed many of the Maroni family with his cruelty and enjoyment of crime. He often helped his parents take out and torture Falcone sympathizers, and was known to be quite ruthless about it. At times, the mob would be divided on whether it was safe to let him advance in power -- but he was able to charm his way back into their good graces.

Fighting With Scarlett
Jack was frequently at odds with his younger sister, Scarlett. He found Scarlett to be whiny and too serious. He also didn’t like that she was convinced she would take his place at the head of the family. He consistently badmouthed her to others to keep her down, and enjoyed tormenting her until she snapped and tried to attack him.

Scarlett was eventually able to physically beat Jack, but by the time she had reached that point, he was already well on his way to becoming the heir of nearly every aspect of their family’s life. He realized that he was in a position where it would be very hard for him to lose his power and reputation, and he decided that he liked it. He taunted Scarlett about his victory, and she vowed to destroy everything he had.

Jack and Roger
Jack maintained the power he held among the mob and civilians all throughout high school. In the school, students and administration alike were frightened of what would happen to them if they upset him or his family. He amassed several followers, chosen for their attitudes and controllability. He was still charismatic, attractive, and cheerful, so he was popular among many of the students, when they were not afraid of him.

One of the followers that Jack gathered had spent several years pitting bullies against a young and quiet student in their class, Roger Madden. Jack never physically attacked Roger, but he found great joy in teasing the boy, and would coordinate the bullying he received. He turned as many students as he could against Roger. Jack knew how intelligent Roger was, and was certain that the other had deduced how much control Jack had.

Roger Rebels
Jack reveled in the glares he received from Roger whenever he proclaimed his innocence, or displayed that he was not a complete fool -- in fact far from it. He was surprised, however, when Roger finally took a stand against him. Roger fought with Jack over a class reading, and crossed a line he never had before by calling out his family’s criminal nature before fleeing the classroom.

Jack feigned being upset about the insult so that he could leave school and follow Roger. He found the other sobbing incoherently down an abandoned street close to the school. Jack, curious as to what had led Roger to such an outburst, and pleased that he seemed to be gaining some ground in breaking Roger, began looking over Roger’s notes on the story. Roger demanded that Jack leave, and Jack decided he was owed an apology.

Roger refused to apologize to Jack, and Jack threatened him with violence. He was surprised to find Roger willing to fight him, and was not threatened by the smaller and weaker boy. He pointed out that the reason he had never personally attacked Roger was because when he did he would kill Roger. Roger, again, made no move, and claimed he wasn’t afraid of Jack. Roger surprises Jack by attacking him in the middle of a sentence. Roger tackled Jack, whose head cracked against the concrete and knocked him out.

Scarlett’s Justice
Jack awoke several hours later, dizzy from his concussion and loss of blood. He managed to get to his house, with the intent to set an example of Roger and his family. He found, however, that during the day his parents had been murdered. Scarlett informed him that Maroni thought they were snitches, and had them killed. She gloated over the fact that they got justice for their crimes, and Jack became very angry.

He was upset that he had lost his footing in the Maroni family, and furious that his sister was not at all miffed. He tried to attack and kill Scarlett, but lost because of her greater strength, and his injury. He ran from the house when she decided to call the police.

I am unsure of what happened beyond this point, but he survived and eventually went all Jokerish. I'm thinking maybe he joined some cliched thing like a circus or carnival or what have you. Who knows.

Relationships
James Gordon - Sometimes the Joker thinks he can rekindle a bit of the old days by messing with Gordon. It doesn’t work, and actually led to Scarlett’s uprising, which greatly upset the Joker. He figures that Gordon is pointless without the Bat.

Cate Hunter - The Joker had his fun convincing Cate and Izzy to break the Redhead out of Arkham, and likes bothering Cate, simply because it’s so easy for him. She is the only other person to know of his relation to Saint Scarlett, and that is because he needed a way to get back at her. He intends to keep a close eye on Cate now, to be sure that she doesn’t get cheeky with the knowledge.

Ash Sheridan - The Joker thinks Red is boring and inconsequential. Her name is stupid, her motif is stupid, and she isn’t even menacing. He is still waiting to get a favor from her, if she ever ends up being good for something.

Aleenya Mlinger - Mlinger is a bit more menacing, but doesn’t even have a name or motif. Which is boring. When the Joker has to interact with her, they usually end up physically fighting somehow, which is good for exercise, but not much else.

Jonathan Crane - The Joker has caught on to how much fun it is to annoy the Birdman. The more Joker interacts with him, the more familiar he becomes. And on the subject of motifs.. what an odd coincidence that his is Sleepy Hollow..

Scarlett Jaide - His main goal now is to make Saint Scarlett suffer. That would bring a smile back to his face. It’s about time one returned.

Fun Facts

 * Under the effects of the fear toxin, the Joker would, unsurprisingly, laugh. He would still be affected, but has lost a normal reaction to fear.