#gotham meta

[leotanaka]

do you ever think about the fact that when jeremiah attempted to give bruce his "one bad day" and push him over the edge with scarecrow's fear gas, bruce's fear in that moment was revealed to be alfred turning into jerome?

like, jeremiah already has a complex over the fact that the man who murdered bruce's parents is a bigger part of bruce's life than he is, can you even imagine what he'd do if he found out one of bruce's biggest fears is literally tied directly to jerome.

[hot-edits-of-the-ice-cold]

Is Gotham 2014 Victor Zszasz a Feminist?

I'm making a video to that Bo Burnham song about a dream guy ("You want a guy that's sweet, a guy that's not. A feminist...") 🎶

and based on season 1-3 I'd say no, because Barbara, who was harrassed by Butch, seems to be more afraid of Victor (although maybe she doesn't wanna talk about it) and Liza says he's a creep (even though he should know to be nice to Falcone's friend) 😨

But then there's the whole hitwomen thing. Does this mean anything? It could be a misandrist thing (only wanting women as subordinates), but it doesn't seem like it.

Opinions welcome!

Otherwise I'd use Lucius (aka the only good man in Gotham ❤️), but I don't remember anything canonically feminist from him (again, season 1-3).

(If you have info on Lucius, you can let me know too, I'm curious :))

[characteranalyses]

Character Analysis: Jerome Valeska (Gotham)

Who is Jerome?

Gotham never treats Jerome Valeska as a normal gangster who happens to laugh a lot. From his first appearance, he feels performative, hungry for attention, and disturbingly comfortable turning his own pain into a spectacle for everyone else. The show introduces him as the son of Lila Valeska and Paul Cicero, later reveals him as Jeremiah's twin, and builds him through repeated cycles of murder, public theatre, death, resurrection, and imitation, which matters for how he functions in the series; Jerome isn't only a killer inside Gotham's chaos, but one of the people teaching Gotham how to enjoy chaos as entertainment.

He becomes especially important because his violence is contagious in a cultural sense; Theo Galavan can use him, the Maniax can follow him, Dwight Pollard can worship him, and random civilians can start copying his laughter after seeing him on television. The show keeps returning to the same idea - Jerome isn't just dangerous because of what he personally does, but because he gives other people permission to let go of restraint and call it liberation, which is why his death never really ends his presence. Gotham keeps treating him as an idea that other people can inherit, distort, or continue.

What makes him more than a stock anarchic villain is how specific his pleasure is. Jerome likes fear, humiliation, spectacle, and the feeling of forcing everyone in the room to react to him. He doesn't want quiet control, but audience, escalation, and the emotional shock of pushing things further than anyone else will. Even when the show later gives Jeremiah the colder, more architectural version of Gotham's nightmare, Jerome still feels foundational because he's the one who turns destruction into a public mood.

Psychology

Antisocial Personality Disorder/ASPD fits Jerome very well. He's deceitful, aggressive, callous, thrill-seeking, and repeatedly violent without anything resembling stable remorse. The series begins with him manipulating the police investigation around his mother's murder, then expands that same pattern into serial killing, hostage-taking, terror campaigns, cult leadership, and the use of other people as props in whatever scene he wants to stage next. He understands fear perfectly well - he just experiences it as leverage and amusement rather than as something that should stop him.

ASPD also fits the way Jerome relates to his own life. He isn't suicidal in the ordinary sense, and he doesn't seem driven by despair or self-hatred, but what stands out is how little intrinsic value his own survival seems to have for him once spectacle, revenge, or emotional impact are on the table. He treats his life the way he treats almost everything else - as material. If staying alive gives him another audience, he'll keep going; if dying creates a bigger scene or wounds someone more deeply, he's perfectly willing to let that happen too. His lack of ordinary self-preservation is interesting - most people's aggression still runs alongside a basic instinct to keep themselves intact, but Jerome often seems detached from that, to the point that death becomes just another dramatic move he can make. Season 4 pushes this especially far, since he's willing to let himself die if that death will spite Jim Gordon in exactly the way he wants.

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder/ADHD is a more tentative secondary lens, but there's enough there for it to be worth naming. Jerome is highly impulsive, attention-seeking, distractible in the way he keeps chasing the next larger thrill, and visibly energised by novelty, escalation, and immediate reaction. He struggles with restraint, gets bored with ordinary limits very quickly, and often seems to need bigger and louder forms of stimulation to stay engaged. None of that explains the cruelty, but it does fit the restless, hyperstimulated quality of how he moves through the show.

His backstory gives his cruelty a shape without softening it; the show presents an abusive mother, a circus environment full of distortion and spectacle, and a verbally cruel, distant father. Jerome carries a huge amount of rage and turns it outward with extraordinary speed, but what's most striking is how much pleasure he takes in performance once the rage has an audience. He doesn't only want revenge on particular people, but to make everyone watch.

There's also a sharp difference between Jerome and the more tragic damaged-villain type; he has pain, yes, but he doesn't build an identity around injury in the same way characters like Oswald or even Jeremiah do. Jerome is much more interested in what pain entitles him to do now. He uses trauma as fuel, not as something he wants understood, which is one reason he can feel so exhilerating and so empty at the same time - the emotional content is there, but it's all been routed toward appetite, attention, and domination.

Strengths and Flaws

Jerome is highly intelligent, and the show is better when that's taken seriously. He isn't just loud or unpredictable - he reads rooms well, understands what frightens people, knows how to turn public attention into power, and can shape a whole event around emotional effect rather than simple body account. The magic show, the carnival, the blackout, gas plot, and even the way he handles television all show someone who understands theatre as strategy. He knows that panic spreads faster when it's memorable.

He's also charismatic in a way Gotham's underworld finds very difficult to reject. Jerome can be funny, magnetic, and weirdly energising even when what he's offering is obviously terrible, which is why Theo can use him, why Dwight's cult forms around him, and why so many later villains or followers feel touched by his style. He has the kind of social force that can make insanity look like momentum for just long enuogh that other people start to join in.

Another major strength is nerve. Jerome will keep escalating when most people would stop, and he can act decisively in situations that would make more ordinary criminals panic or retreat. He handles violence, improvisation, and personal risk with an ease that makes him extremely hard to contain once he has enough room to perform. It doesn't make him disciplined in the colder Jeremiah sense, but it makes him dangerous in a much more volatile and contagious way.

His worst quality is sadistic theatricality. Jerome doesn't only want to hurt people or remove obstacles - he wants them frightened, destabilised, humiliated, and fully aware that he's the one doing it. The killings are scenes to him, the hostages are audience, and the city is a stage large enough to prove that his feelings should become everybody else's problem too.

He's also consumed by escalation. He rarely leaves anything at the level of ordinary vengeance or ordinary mayhem; once he has a grievance or target, he keeps widening the frame until it becomes a citywide, media, cult, or symbolic event, which makes him exciting to watch but catastrophically unfit for any stable alliance. People can use him briefly, but nobody sensible could ever trust the scale he'll choose next.

A third flaw is that he mistakes emotional intensity for truth. If he feels something strongly enough, he treats that feeling as revelation, permission, and proof all at once, which is why he can speak so convincingly while being so obviously insane. He sounds certain because he has almost no inner brake between impulse and conviction.

Relationships

BRUCE WAYNE Jerome sees in Bruce a perfect audience and a perfect opposite; Bruce is wealthy, serious, self-controlled, and still clinging to the idea that Gotham can produce something better than spectacle and cruelty, and Jerome keeps trying to break that certainty. Their confrontations have a strong theatrical edge because Jerome doesn't just want Bruce dead, but destabilised, fascinated, and emotionally marked by him. Bruce's refusal to kill him and refusal to become similarly demented gives their relationship its shape - Jerome keeps trying to prove that Gotham's truth is chaos, and Bruce keeps surviving as evidence against that claim. On a more personal level, it's also quite interesting to me that he confesses the truth of his abuse at the hands of his uncle to Bruce in their diner encounter - Jerome is typically one to turn his trauma into a joke or avoid discussing something so personal entirely, so it's telling that he does it there.

JEREMIAH VALESKA Jeremiah is the relationship that makes Jerome feel most personal. Whether you take Jerome's version of their childhood or Jeremiah's, their bond is built on obsession, rivalry, injury, and an almost ecstatic desire to drag the other brother into his own worldview. Jerome doesn't want simple revenge on Jeremiah, but transformation; his final "gift" to Jeremiah is the clearest expression of that - a post-mortem attempt to make sure his legacy continues through his brother's psyche and Gotham itself. Their relationship is grotesquely intimate because Jerome treats identity as something he can infect.

JIM GORDON Jim is one of the few people in Gotham who keeps meeting Jerome with blunt opposition rather than fascination, which makes him useful to Jerome in a different way. He's the lawman Jerome can mock, outplay for a while, and force into increasingly absurd situations, but he's also one of the people who keeps cutting through the performance enough to treat Jerome as a real civic threat rather than a glorious symbol. Jerome's last words to Jim are about legacy, contagion, and return, which says a great deal about what Jim represents to him: the institutional face of Gotham that he keeps trying to humiliate by proving it can never truly contain what he's unleashed.

JERVIS TETCH / JONATHAN CRANE Jervis and Jonathan show what Jerome looks like around other theatrical, psychologically driven villains rather than around frightened civilians or rigid authority figures. With them, he becomes less singular and more obviously a ringmaster, the one assembling a style of villainy around spectacle, mind games, and fear. Their alliance works because all three understand performance, though Jerome remains the most openly anarchic of the group; Jervis brings control and obsession, Jonathan brings fear as method, and Jerome turns the whole thing into a louder, more contagious event.

OSWALD COBBLEPOT Oswald is useful because he shows where Jerome's appetite for chaos clashes with a villain who still cares about survival, territory, and continuity. Oswald can be theatrical too, but his ambition has a much more practical spine; Jerome keeps threatening that practicality because he enjoys disorder far more than he enjoys holding anything together. Their overlap in the Legion of Horribles puts that contrast into sharp relief; Oswald wants advantage, while Jerome wants the kind of atmosphere where advantage stops mattering because everyone is reacting to him instead.

THEO GALAVAN Galavan is one of the few people who successfully uses Jerome's energy for a larger political plan. He recognises Jerome's charisma and volatility, helps elevate his scale, and functions as a father-figure-meets-handler in a way that gives Jerome more room to become publicly mythic. At the same time, their relationship also shows Jerome's limits as a subordinate; he can be directed for a while, but only by someone willing to flatter the performance and weaponise it. Galavan's betrayal and murder of him makes perfect sense inside that dynamic - he never saw Jerome as controllable forever, only useful until the spectacle had served its purpose.

Just for Fun / Typology

MBTI - ENTP What stands out first is how aggressively he uses Ne. His mind keeps pushing outward toward bigger spectacles, stranger jokes, wider chaos, and more theatrical ways to turn a situation. He's constantly reframing the moment, destabilising the social rules around it, and looking for the next escalation that will make everyone else react harder. His energy is expansive, provocative, and restlessly inventive.

Ti fits the colder structure underneath that frenzy. Jerome isn't morally grounded, but he does operate through a private logic that lets him justify what he's doing and talk about it with unnerving clarity. He's very good at turning instinct into argument, cruelty into principle, and performance into something that sounds almost philosophical, and that combination (wild outward invention with a sharp internal logic serving it) lands much more cleanly as ENTP than as a more purely emotional or sensory type.

MORAL ALIGNMENT - Chaotic Evil He has no real loyalty to order, hierarchy, or code beyond whatever lets him seize attention for another scene. Alliances, institutions, and plans are useful only as long as they can be bent toward wider panic and spectacle. The moment structure becomes limiting instead of useful, he turns on it or blows through it.

He also lands very cleanly on the Evil side. Jerome murders for pleasure, humiliation, publicity, revenge, and the thrill of making other people emotionally collapse around him. He's capable of charm and pain, but neither of those things slows the cruelty down - they only make it more vivid.

Conclusion

Jerome works because Gotham lets him be funny, magnetic, damaged, theatrical, intelligent, and appallingly cruel all at once. The show never asks you to confuse his pain with innocence, and it never tries to flatten him into a brute who just happens to laugh - he's much more dangerous than that. He knows how to turn his own fury into a public event and how to make a city remember him even after he's gone.

He also feels central to Gotham's whole proto-Joker mythology because he makes madness look like participation rather than isolation. People don't just fear Jerome - they copy him, inherit him, react to him, and let him reorganise the emotional climate of the city, which gives him a bigger presence than his screentime alone would suggest, and it's a huge part of why he's so memorable.

[psalmsofpsychosis]

Like, the way Wayleska tenfolds each time you consider it through the Twinleska lens. Jeremiah Valeska sees Jerome in Bruce Wayne; he's moved to fix him, guide his actions, get Bruce angry at him, goad him to hurt Jermeiah because he thinks he deserves it­­- Jerome's anger, Bruce's anger. He wants to get hurt, he feels guilty and worthy of punishment, "If we can't be bonded as brothers, then we'll be bonded by hatred," is as well what he said and did to Jerome at 10, he's a repeating history. He sees Jerome in Bruce and he tries to orchestrate his life for him and enrage him so this "Jerome" will get him at last, will have his revenge for good and will finally give Jeremiah what he thinks he deserves. What he thought he deserved in a twin brother/lover; protection, affection, sex, love, death. It makes Jeremiah's attempt at re-killing Bruce's parents that much worse too. Desperate efforts to get involved in a dead twin's life, "It's the most important day of your life and i wasn't a part of it, that ought to be rectified." Parents dying isn't the pavotal moment of Bruce's life only, it's Jerome's too, the night he finally kills Lila. Jeremiah killing their parent would be a service to Jerome, it'd make him the hero in Jerome's story, not the villain. Part of this grief-ridden delusion is why he's absolutely sure he'll be the dream Bruce falls asleep to either way.

His every plea to be a part of Bruce's life is a cast of his plea to be part of Jerome's life, he never really sees Bruce clearly as a separate person. Everything in Gotham 2014 is grief reflecting in a broken mirrorhouse, Jerome's face "slips" and Bruce gets told he's like him in one too.

[broken-lycan]

spawned from a convo with @postmortemboobjob

#< hmmm i was gonna talk about masculinity. batman. and lining up with their future selves here#but for the life of me i cannot articulate it#but! from the (limited) versions of gordon i have seen he doesn't seem like an angry dude?#no more angry than an average (relatively) decent person in gotham#so my hope (that probably will not come true) is that eventually he mellows out#maybe after seeing what excessive anger does to the rogues?#or to bruce

I agree that he's not inherently an angry person though he does carry (rightful) rage against the system and the people who keep the corrupt system going. but he does have a penchant for aggression? when push comes to shove he does get loud and aggressive and violent. and at first (early s1) he feels bad about it but to me it seems over the course of s1 he becomes more and more used to it and desensitised to it. partially this is probably the theme throughout the show how gotham (the city) changes people to become more jaded, rougher, violent, mentally unwell etc. partially it might also just be who he is no matter how much he tries to tell himself he isnt. the way he interact with some of the children in early s1 shows he is very much capable of being gentle and compassionate and soft hearted. and I miss those instances because they become rarer. and compassion is like the number one thing any human desperately needs. compassion, love and a sense of belonging. and when people dont get that they can escalate into a severe mental health crisis. (there is an idea that sometimes floats around my brain, sort of a crack thing: what if all the people in gotham who get sent to arkham, who are going through severe mental health problems that lead them to become criminals etc... what if they all got access to actually helpful mental health care? therapists and psychologists, medication if they need it. (same also goes for the people who commit crimes or join the underworld for other reasons).it wouldn't be gotham, because that fundamentally isnt the kind of city it is. but what if xD prisons like they have in scandinavian countries, free health care regardless of employment status, universal basic income, etc)

what I also keep forgetting is that he is ex-military. I'd imagine he joined voluntarily and given the fact that someone (maybe harvey?) in early s1 sarcastically calls him a war hero, I'd imagine he has some reputation of being a good fighter and reliable etc. and you can't really get anywhere in the military by being gentle, kind and soft.

lining up with their future selves I know very little about the general batman media canon but I do know Jim ends up as commissioner, so he stays within in the oppressive system, rises up through the ranks. so for what the narrative has planned for him, it's never an option for him to stop being a cop or leaving that general branch. he can't choose to go rogue entirely, he can't choose to volunteer with humanitarian organisations because he needs to stay within in the corrupt environment that is the police force. I do wonder at which point he gives up on the idealist wish to be able to change the system from within without entirely dismantling it. I know at some point in later s1 he still has it. or maybe aligning himself with some of the mob becomes the way he thinks he can do it.

maybe after seeing what excessive anger does to the rogues? or to bruce that would be so nice honestly. having the realisation how much anger and rage eats away at someone and how destructive and unproductive it is. but unfortunately I see a few factors going against that 1) he would always find a way to convince himself his brand of anger is justified. or that the people he's angry at are morally right to be angry at even if the rogues are angry at the same people as him. he is very capable of that hypocrisy xD 2) the kind of show that gotham is. it is at it's core at least partially a us-american cop show. the amount of violence and aggression that specifically the male characters show is unfortunately very normal. and I think the role Jim plays in the narrative is the male action hero. so he gets to be angry and aggressive because he's a man. he has his damsel(s) in distress to save, he has his holy mission that he must succeed in and any morally grey things he does are ultimately in pursuit of justice/the greater good so can in the end be justified as morally correct.

is this coherent enough?? idk xD feel free to add on, idk if this goes in the exact direction you were thinking

[help-itrappedmyself]

I need a fic about a meta in Gotham, with Danger Sense. But they think that they're mentally ill because it manifests as a voice screaming at them.

something like...

Person A, walks into a coffee shop.

In their head: get out, GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT

just getting increasingly louder and more annoying the longer they stay there.

Person A, throws hand in air: Alright! I just wanted a coffee! Jeez.

Leaves coffee shop to persistent whispering: leave, go faster, ect...

Obviously, everyone in the shop is confused, but 3 minutes later something terrible happens, bomb goes off, whatever.

[it-happened-once-in-a-meme]

In Defense of Gotham (2014): It's Better than the Fandom Says ❤️🖤

(at least as of season 3) Gotham is currently one of my favorite TV series: it has interesting characters, relationships, storylines, good acting, stunt work and a wonderful mix of dystopian elements with humor. Yet a lot of tumblr posts would have you believe that it's the worst thing ever written.

So in honor of its 11th anniversary (September 22th), here's why I don't think it's bad and why some critique points belong in the true-but-not-worse-than-in-most-other-shows category: 1. "The writing is bad" as if there weren't lots of quotes ranging from humorous to wise. You do realize that everything was written, it wasn't just weird plotlines people threw into a story that wrote itself. Every character you like for more than their acting was written to be like that, every plotline you were invested in had to be plannned in advance.

2. Bad continuity aka forgotten plot points I find annoying too cause come on, you can't just introduce a character who looks identical to another one without saying why, but on the whole (aka if we ignore that Isabella should've been adressed 😅), there are actually a lot of things with consequences for the furtue, more than in other stories (think characters holding grudges because of early events, or personal relationships mattering, butterfly effects (the Wayne murder having consequences in every direction from Bruce to Ivy and Tabitha).

3. Misogyny For a show inspired by New York in the 1970s, when things like domestic violence or abuse in a family were often widely ignored, the crimes against girls and women as well as reactions are depicted pretty well and yes, a part of that includes ignorance from male characters.

There are some things that really annoy me about the show's treatment (like a lot), but I still like the women themselves: they're good characters, whether they have major or minor roles (for example Nora Fries was so sweet during the like two episodes she was in or Liza I keep thinking about despite how little we know about her). To me Gotham even stands out in how good the female characters are compared to other shows. Think about how many fandoms need a female characters compilation or questions like "favorite female character" to even talk about them 🥲

Certain characters may be tied a bit too much to their femininity, but for some that's great realism-wise. Barbara Kean for example reinvents herself so many times, emerging with a new look, but essentially just another type of attractive a woman can be, which makes total sense consider how important being attractive has been for her.

4. Queerbaiting We have multiple queer characters. It's annoying that a certain character never explicitly realizes he's queer, and a shame that some of my favorite ships aren't canon, but they're only a part of numerous characters and, like real people, have problems getting together. Some of the Gotham account tweets from back then were fully queerbaiting, though.

5. Conclusion Ultimately I don't know what every single "Gotham would be an amazing show if it wasn't so bad" poster likes in entertainment, but I'm sure for a part of what they want to express is that it's a weird show, that they. Crazy things happen but it's a crazy world. Sometimes the reason for something happening is because it's iconic and it loves to do iconic things.

My questions for the heavy Gotham criticizers is this: what do you think makes Gotham "the worst show"? What makes it worse than so many bad shows (for example boring ones) when it's already better on multiple levels?

Hopefully this post can bring more positivity into the Gotham fandom, since entering the fandom enthusiastically but seeing a lot of people hate on it can be pretty discouraging, both for new and old fans. ❤️

[pengylove]

Unpopular opinions time, but let me talk about that famous "hug with knives to each other's backs" scene.

I might do a bigger post with screencaps and stuff later on, but for now, just my thoughts:

I don't think that Oswald for even a second thought about betraying and killing Edward.

You see, he's watching him very attentively throughout Ed's/Riddler's whole speech about taking Gotham back and he doesn't look entirely comfortable while at it.

And throughout the most important part of the speech, where he speaks about his plans, Ed/Riddler keeps looking at his reflection in the mirror, and throughout the whole speech not even once he mentions Oswald, always saying that he came back, he intends to reclaim Gotham etc etc - there is no 'we' here, only 'I'.

So what I think happened is that Oswald realized that Riddler is taking Ed over again, and he knows what it means, for Ed and for others, and Oswald wants so desperately to believe his Ed is stronger than Riddler, so he tells him they would be stronger together*, gives him a chance to prove he is more Ed, his Ed, than Riddler, but Ed/Riddler still doesn't look at him and only says "Perhaps", so Oswald pulls out his knife because he is almost sure that Riddler is taking Ed over, which will destroy his Ed and Gotham eventually, and that Riddler's next logical step would be to kill him, so Oswald pulls out his knife to kill him in turn - to rid the city of him and yes, rid Ed of this too - if Riddler decides to kill him.

And he asks for a hug, both as a way to open himself up to him, give him the perfect opportunity to literally and metaphotically stab him in the back, and as one last comfort before his death, a chance to die in the arms of the one he loves.

And the hug is perfect, it's everything he has ever wanted, but Oswald is ready to push the blade into Riddler's back the moment his blade enters his own and he gets teary-eyed because he wishes that this hug was true, that they could be together forever, Ed and him, in life, but he is afraid that it's not meant to be, considering their history and what he witnessed just now.

He gets teary-eyed and smiles shakily, sadly because for his in a lot of ways messed up life this is kind of a perfect messed up ending, to die in the arms of the one he loves, from the wound that one gives him and killing him in turn.

But then... Ed's feelings towards him turn out to be stronger. And he doesn't go through with the stabbing, and Oswald smiles, and hugs him tighter, because it is his Ed and they actually have a future together and finally, finally it looks like they are going to get their happy ending, and Ed hugs him tighter back...

And life begins anew.

*although that particular phrase, with that wistful look, with that little smile, might also mean he already made up his mind and he is talking about an "if" situation - they would be stronger, no one could stop them, if they could be together, if it was his Ed, if he wasn't planning on killing Oswald and Oswald didn't have to kill him