SO WAS ANYONE GONNA TELL ME THERE'S NEW JEROME CONTENT!??!?!?!

@dawthompson

Gotham season 5 premiered last night (it’s awesome, go check it out!) but I can’t believe they cut the scene where I just pet a dog for 10 minutes #Gotham #Scarecrow #doggy

Via: Instagram

Awww how cute 😊

mikemaddimakeup Even Villains need a break now and then. Sn 4 Gotham (pictured left to right) Michelle Veintimilla, David W. Thompson, Cameron Monaghan and Nathan Darrow   Via: Instagram

robinlordtaylor   Tomorrow night will be the second to last Gotham episode ever. Thank you all for watching and supporting us. 8/7c on Fox. ❤️🐧 Via: Instagram

Jerome Valeska’s Diary: Full Transcription Master Post

Apologies for flooding the tag(s) with 6 individual transcription posts complete with screencaps, but I couldn’t cram them all into a single text-and-image post without running into formatting issues.  As mentioned in the tags of the initial post, I’ve done these complete transcriptions because I’ve only ever seen fragmental ones out there.  

Hopefully this’ll help anyone who’s been curious to know the entirety of what’s contained in these bizarre pages, but has found them tricky to read:

Complete transcription of Screencap 1

Complete transcription of Screencap 2

Complete transcription of Screencap 3

Complete transcription of Screencap 4

Complete transcription of Screencap 5

Complete transcription of Screencap 6

@irisbleufic “I was able to get down about 99% of the content, barring words covered by Jeremiah’s fingers and a few lines that are just too smudged by image quality to be read.  I hope this fills in the gaps sufficiently, @inappropriatefangirlneeds! “ I intended to revisit this some time I´m glad this had has been well taken care of *.* Thank you for the effort! I need to set some time aside to properly read it. As for if it fills the gaps sufficiently I´ll leave that judgement to the Jerome and Jeremiah enthusiasts I´m certainly not the local Valeska authority but I´m quite certain the answer is a clear yes ;) 

Thanks for the reblog! If nothing else, I feel silly for not having included the page that’s nothing but “listen to me” repeated over and over again, what when I bothered to painstakingly transcribe the entirety of the “GOTHAM GOTHAM GOTHAM / GORDON GORDON GORDON” page. I hope, barring the “listen to me” page, that everything else in my transcription is as present and accounted-for as it can be. Part of my motivation for finally doing this was the knowledge I’d be referring to the journal’s content, in some unusual detail, in a story near the end of a series I’ve just wrapped up on AO3. It’s got to be the single most fascinating prop from the entire show. What I wonder is if Cameron Monaghan had a hand in its creation at all, as a way of tying the contents into his acting decisions, or if it was 100% the work of the prop department.

yeah I mean he asks to be listened to and exactly that one gets gets less attention, ohh the irony ;D ;D ;D  It indeed would be super interesting to know if they collaborated with the actor on this prop! I can´t commit to longer fics currently but I´m gonna highlight that link again looks super interesting: “Configured Stars” Series by irisbleufic on AO3 

Jerome Valeska´s Diary & Satans Tan Anus?

“Arkham Asylum sent me Jerome’s personal effects.  And amongst them, I found his diary.  It’s a catalog of his fantasies and goals. Every twisted vision he ever had.. He was obsessed with torturing and murdering me, James Gordon, and you.  And if he had been just the least bit sane, he would have destroyed us all. And Gotham would be in ruin.” (4x20)

Has anyone took a closer look on the pages of the diary that they showed us? I tried but I can barely read anything .. I noted a couple of things down  and cropped some Screencaps of the 7 double pages  ..  EDIT: I forgot tumblr makes Pics smaller in the text Part BIGGER SCREENCAPS HERE x Also on a side note: Is there something to say about Jeremiah´s maze design?

1. PAGE

P u  m        p       U   R   a  n U S       R    I   P       ?   O   L  L  S       E    v   e   o  p       R (This reminds me of Oswald and The Riddlers message system? The word downwards could spell out murder? And I´m pretty sure I read “Penguin” on that Page and “ward” maybe ) (but who is Jeff? ) LEFT page: What what what ward(word?) ______ candle in Penguin __inger hole ___ ____  N lumps  lumps fat lumps and  __cepid(?insipid) pools of baby dead animals on the road to my friends Jeffs house happy ___ !  Happy time!

Keep reading

seeing the commentary in the notes makes me giggle cause everyone is like, there’s a tragic aspect here, but like….this is just normal stream of consciousness naked lunch-esque ‘my brain is fucked up let’s write down every little thing that comes to mind’ shit. i’ve written plenty like this (well….with less explicit violence and murder), because this is kinda common expression for people with a certain kind of mental illness or people who have done just. oodles and oodles of drugs.

the only thing i wonder about is the 666 stamps and satanic references. cause i think those were almost certainly added by some prop intern who just thought ‘OOH…SATAN…EVIL….PERFECT", and it’s kind of a throw from what we know of jerome. has he ever explicitly shown interest in satanism? then again, a lot of young people dabble in satanism to some degree, so it’s not too surprising.

this all seems average to me though. i know it’s supposed to be a ‘look into a twisted mind’ and all that, but it just reminds me of what i was like as a teenager coming to terms with my mental illness. i like the snakes

@littlesaintmick   #JEROME VALESKA #LISTEN GUYS IDK HOW TO TELL YOU THIS BUT THE MENTALLY ILL PART OF JEROME ISN’T THE SCARY PART ABOUT HIM I love reading different perspectives on this!  This is especially interesting, and even more so since I once did an essay on therapeutic writing. (Just not from a psychology angle or background so I´m very hesitant to comment anything on mental health matters)

And isn´t it odd how different things register as odd. I didn´t bat an eyelid at the satanism. Might be partially due to my taste in music. I do think it does fit with Jerome quite well though. I can´t really see him actually being interested in ideological, philosophical or religious Satanism. (He´d just call your clinche chicken murderers ridiculous amateurs and dilettants, he´d snicker about how silly Crowley and LaVey look and mock them &  doubt he´d have the patience to read into The Satanic Temple also they don´t even believe in an actual Satan how boring.) How does it fit then? Imho certainly for it´s symbolic quality and what it represents for people. 

1. Internal: As you say an interest in satanism in one´s youth isn´t unheard of. Quite often it´s linked to a feeling of not fitting in, of being an outsider. And if people reject you it seems not unreasonable to believe something is wrong with you or bad or evil. If you don´t fit in with mainstream society you can find solace in the “other”. Or you can actively embrace it. As kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. You think something is wrong with me? You tell me there is something wrong with me? I´ll just show you how much. I guess judging on in which way Jerome might relate to that depends on which brother you believe when they talk about their childhood. But either way violence is right in the diary and that´s a ““bad”” thing, linking it to the “ultimate bad/evil” isn´t a big step. Even if it´s just for the aesthetics: 

2. External: Satanism can make people(*) angry, can actually frighten people, it can get a rise out of somebody really easily, can cause intense knee-jerk reactions. It´s a tool. Surely Jerome doesn´t need Satanism to do all that but why not make use of it occasionally. 

(*) depending on demographics, geography etc. of course

I´m also again linking to @irisbleufic´s marvelous transcriptions here !

i mean, yes, because those are basically the reasons *i* dabbled in satanism/similar beliefs. it was about 1. counterculture and trying to find a place that validated my feelings of Otherness and 2. freaking people out.

i think i said this somewhere else, maybe in the tags of this post, who knows, but jerome’s diary-and really, quite a few of his actions-strike me as inherently juvenile. that’s not bad or a knock against him or anything, i think-more than just him being mentally ill, which i wish people would stop using mental illness as a tragedy-i think the juvenile aspect adds a layer of tragedy to him. this kid likely never got a chance to really emotionally grow out of that stage, between having a chaotic childhood in the circus and the oodles and oodles of abuse, he was probably very much stuck in that phase of ‘i have to find someplace that accepts me and maybe the only place that accepts me will be what others consider ‘bad’’.

though i do personally believe jerome has done just. a LOT of drugs, before the first time he got killed, so there’s probably some substance abuse going on. i also like to believe he did actually spend a lot of time reading (not just using ‘going to the library’ as an excuse for god knows what) and probably sought things out that validated his feelings. i definitely think there wasn’t a genuine belief in the religious/philosophical side of satanism, since i think he mostly only believes in himself, but he probably did still read a lot of relevant materials. 

all of my thoughts on jerome come from my experiences as a schizophrenic person with ptsd. it’s hard not to see a lot of similarities between him and me, so i think my perspective is….unique? in that sense :p 

!!!

Jerome Valeska´s Diary & Satans Tan Anus?

“Arkham Asylum sent me Jerome’s personal effects.  And amongst them, I found his diary.  It’s a catalog of his fantasies and goals. Every twisted vision he ever had.. He was obsessed with torturing and murdering me, James Gordon, and you.  And if he had been just the least bit sane, he would have destroyed us all. And Gotham would be in ruin.” (4x20)

Has anyone took a closer look on the pages of the diary that they showed us? I tried but I can barely read anything .. I noted a couple of things down  and cropped some Screencaps of the 7 double pages  ..  EDIT: I forgot tumblr makes Pics smaller in the text Part BIGGER SCREENCAPS HERE x Also on a side note: Is there something to say about Jeremiah´s maze design?

1. PAGE

P u  m        p       U   R   a  n U S       R    I   P       ?   O   L  L  S       E    v   e   o  p       R (This reminds me of Oswald and The Riddlers message system? The word downwards could spell out murder? And I´m pretty sure I read “Penguin” on that Page and “ward” maybe ) (but who is Jeff? ) LEFT page: What what what ward(word?) ______ candle in Penguin __inger hole ___ ____  N lumps  lumps fat lumps and  __cepid(?insipid) pools of baby dead animals on the road to my friends Jeffs house happy ___ !  Happy time!

Keep reading

seeing the commentary in the notes makes me giggle cause everyone is like, there’s a tragic aspect here, but like….this is just normal stream of consciousness naked lunch-esque ‘my brain is fucked up let’s write down every little thing that comes to mind’ shit. i’ve written plenty like this (well….with less explicit violence and murder), because this is kinda common expression for people with a certain kind of mental illness or people who have done just. oodles and oodles of drugs.

the only thing i wonder about is the 666 stamps and satanic references. cause i think those were almost certainly added by some prop intern who just thought 'OOH…SATAN…EVIL….PERFECT", and it’s kind of a throw from what we know of jerome. has he ever explicitly shown interest in satanism? then again, a lot of young people dabble in satanism to some degree, so it’s not too surprising.

this all seems average to me though. i know it’s supposed to be a 'look into a twisted mind’ and all that, but it just reminds me of what i was like as a teenager coming to terms with my mental illness. i like the snakes

@littlesaintmick   #JEROME VALESKA #LISTEN GUYS IDK HOW TO TELL YOU THIS BUT THE MENTALLY ILL PART OF JEROME ISN'T THE SCARY PART ABOUT HIM I love reading different perspectives on this!  This is especially interesting, and even more so since I once did an essay on therapeutic writing. (Just not from a psychology angle or background so I´m very hesitant to comment anything on mental health matters)

And isn´t it odd how different things register as odd. I didn´t bat an eyelid at the satanism. Might be partially due to my taste in music. I do think it does fit with Jerome quite well though. I can´t really see him actually being interested in ideological, philosophical or religious Satanism. (He´d just call your clinche chicken murderers ridiculous amateurs and dilettants, he´d snicker about how silly Crowley and LaVey look and mock them &  doubt he´d have the patience to read into The Satanic Temple also they don´t even believe in an actual Satan how boring.) How does it fit then? Imho certainly for it´s symbolic quality and what it represents for people. 

1. Internal: As you say an interest in satanism in one´s youth isn´t unheard of. Quite often it´s linked to a feeling of not fitting in, of being an outsider. And if people reject you it seems not unreasonable to believe something is wrong with you or bad or evil. If you don´t fit in with mainstream society you can find solace in the “other”. Or you can actively embrace it. As kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. You think something is wrong with me? You tell me there is something wrong with me? I´ll just show you how much. I guess judging on in which way Jerome might relate to that depends on which brother you believe when they talk about their childhood. But either way violence is right in the diary and that´s a ““bad”” thing, linking it to the “ultimate bad/evil” isn´t a big step. Even if it´s just for the aesthetics: 

2. External: Satanism can make people(*) angry, can actually frighten people, it can get a rise out of somebody really easily, can cause intense knee-jerk reactions. It´s a tool. Surely Jerome doesn´t need Satanism to do all that but why not make use of it occasionally. 

(*) depending on demographics, geography etc. of course

I´m also again linking to @irisbleufic´s marvelous transcriptions here !

Jerome Valeska’s Diary: Full Transcription Master Post

Apologies for flooding the tag(s) with 6 individual transcription posts complete with screencaps, but I couldn’t cram them all into a single text-and-image post without running into formatting issues.  As mentioned in the tags of the initial post, I’ve done these complete transcriptions because I’ve only ever seen fragmental ones out there.  

Hopefully this’ll help anyone who’s been curious to know the entirety of what’s contained in these bizarre pages, but has found them tricky to read:

Complete transcription of Screencap 1

Complete transcription of Screencap 2

Complete transcription of Screencap 3

Complete transcription of Screencap 4

Complete transcription of Screencap 5

Complete transcription of Screencap 6

@irisbleufic “I was able to get down about 99% of the content, barring words covered by Jeremiah’s fingers and a few lines that are just too smudged by image quality to be read.  I hope this fills in the gaps sufficiently, @inappropriatefangirlneeds! “ I intended to revisit this some time I´m glad this had has been well taken care of *.* Thank you for the effort! I need to set some time aside to properly read it. As for if it fills the gaps sufficiently I´ll leave that judgement to the Jerome and Jeremiah enthusiasts I´m certainly not the local Valeska authority but I´m quite certain the answer is a clear yes ;) 

It actually struck me - looking over this - how similar the context is, too.  Not just the fact that both Jerome and Barbara commit (and attempt to commit) suicide - but that it’s in the context of an obsessive showdown with someone they love/hate, someone they can’t forgive for betraying them and abandoning them.

I´m tempted to do a “who wore it better” with all scenes Gotham paralleled, oh sorry did a “callback” of .. here my vote goes to Bab´s dress 

I am sensing…

a pattern…

here…

“Grilled cheese and Branston pickle sandwich, Mr. Jeremiah. My influence, though Thomas did add a dash of aioli for extra flair.” “Oh. Come on, Bruce. That’s a weird favorite food for a 12 year old.”   (Alfred Pennyworth, Jeremiah Valeska  | Gotham Food 5x07) 

One thing I loved about the whole sandwich thing was the fact that Jeremiah inadvertently acted very much like Jerome would have here, he would have totally made fun of the food choices as a child of someone like Bruce too.

The only difference really is that Jerome wouldn’t have been able to stop mocking, he would have laughed a lot longer at it, and would have probably brought it up again minutes later after already talking about totally different things, cause he’s the kind of person who can’t let this kind of thing go.

The mere sight of the sandwich of the plate would have caught Jerome’s attention again at some point and he would have started all over again, whereas Jeremiah just thoroughly laughed at it once, but then actually went on to sort of apologize for laughing about it, and later went even on to try it and clearly came to the conclusion that he may have been wrong for mocking him, which so very nicely highlights the different ways the twins felt about Bruce.

However this was really still possibly the closest that he was to being very reminiscent of Jerome, like Jeremiah mocking someone for their food choices is not out of character for him either, except usually he’d be the kind who’d sneer at it and proceed to look down on the person and feel superior to them for eating stuff like that and acting all mature, and yet, here he was being an absolute child about it, like it was rather like a boy mocking his little cousin when finding out their food habits during a sleep over, and this is not usually Jeremiah, it was always Jerome who was the more child-like one.

interesting! Jeremiah is indeed more amused about the choice per se, while Jerome probably would laugh about the person for making the choice, it´s laughing about something vs laughing at the expense of someone ..  

is there (more) meta about the use of humor by the Valeskas? Jerome certainly had more “weaponized” humor? Laugh about someone to put them down, it was a tool to scare people, even the HaHa! Graffiti was there to instill terror .. but with Jeremiah it pretty much vanished (except for Ecco leaving it at the GCPD map.. ) in favour of the religious imagery, ... that could maybe come back to those words about maturity? Anarchistic concepts seems to resonate more with younger people, rather than organized religion/cult/believes .. with Jerome there was a certain aesthetic among the followers but a lot of variety, once Jeremiah steps in things become (literally) more uniform and structured ..

Jeremiah trying to turn Gotham city into a maze/labyrinth

adds exciting new dimensions to all discussion over here!

so… Jeremiah as Minotaur is not trying to escape his labyrinth/maze at all, but trying to bring everyone else inside it with him… maybe he thinks he in fact actually thinks he is ‘curing/saving/healing’ the city by rebuilding it this way?? linking to the association of labyrinths and healing that you mentioned @inappropriatefangirlneeds? turning the whole city into the safe place that his bunker was, like Jim says

hmmmm……..

I´m also gonna take that wonderful post of yours into consideration here: 

because those go really well together.  Jeremiah extending that maze could be read as an attempt to (dis)solve this paradox that lies in the freedom found inside a maze. He would be extending and keeping the structure that gives comfort while eradicating the boundaries. If you extend the maze to everyone else you get rid of the being trapped component? 

I love the though of him percieving this as “curing/saving/healing the city”  in context of our conversation, I´m not sure if the show has built up enough substance to that actually being the case.. tbh I´m still kind of confused about Jeremiah´s motives in general ..  unless you say he´s just acting gas crazy .. why is he following Jerome´s path? How does him trying to surpass him fit together with him trying to distinguish himself from Jerome..  Is his vision just a narcissistic one or indeed one that does consider the city too ..  another “cleansing” of Gotham ..  

and oh boy do I feel that intimidated by choices thing .. waaay too much, I wonder if there´s a spare room in that bunker 

I really loved Jeremiah trying to extend his maze in the end, I thought it worked great :) And he did somewhat achieve his goal too! Albeit without the literal maze part. All of Gotham City is now indeed ‘free’ within its own confined space - in the sense of being ‘free’ of law and order at least :p

If you extend the maze to everyone else you get rid of the being trapped component? - OOOOR, you make sure everyone else is TRAPPED WITH YOU.

Because maybe it’s the being trapped part that Jeremiah actually LIKED. He was just tired of being trapped ALONE? 

Though yes, the idea of him actually being motivated by a desire to save/heal the whole city was always a bit of a stretch :p Seems the only person he really cares about being ‘trapped’ with, and paradoxically ‘free’ via said trap with, is Bruce in particular. It’s just that in order to get Bruce, he has to take the whole city as well, or something? 

I´m still kind of confused about Jeremiah´s motives in general ..  unless you say he´s just acting gas crazy .. why is he following Jerome´s path? How does him trying to surpass him fit together with him trying to distinguish himself from Jerome

Well the way I was seeing it, him trying to surpass Jerome WAS him distinguishing himself from Jerome in his mind. Because Jerome failed at his plans, so I figure in Jeremiah’s logic, if he succeeded in completing Jerome’s schemes (ie. killing Gordon and… whatever else it was!) but via his own methods, it would simultaneously prove him better than Jerome and prove he is his own person. I think?

Although, ofc, Jeremiah clearly NEVER planned to follow Jerome’s path exactly, since Jerome apparently planned to kill Bruce, while Jeremiah ofc never planned to do that.

So… there’s also an argument that perhaps he was completing some of Jerome’s plans not so much for his own sake but simply to get Jerome’s followers on side?

Meaning that when he scrapped Jerome’s cult in the fire he maybe stopped following Jerome’s path at that point? Hence why his focus narrowed in on Bruce, to the point of him agreeing to work with Ra’s.

Certainly it seems like the ONLY thing driving him by the finale was an obsession to transform/free Bruce in order to create an intimate relationship between the two of them.

To bring it back to the Minotaur thing - part of that myth was that the Minotaur required regular sacrifices of people that he would hunt and kill inside the labyrinth… Perhaps another concept to link to Jeremiah extending his maze/labyrinth? He’s making sure his home is full of ‘food’ for him to hunt and enjoy? :p 

Haha this is getting like a whole maze on itself :D So many good options all around. 

I was on the edge of saying but the Bruce obsession is just another spleen Jeremiah took over from his brother, but actually, what profound reason did Jerome have .. other than Bruce being a prestigious target, one that would grant him an audience, one he has no trouble or reservations to antagonize .. Jeremiah and Bruce though did really seem to share a few moments with their clean, affordable energy project ..

The part about Jeremiah´s Jerome act happening because of the followers is one that gets me thinking. I´ve mostly been viewing them in line with the Joker idea spreading, Jerome´s claim he might be gone but his attitude will stay, the two sides of a coin brother thing etc. .. but I think it could certainly help to just view Jeremiah independently from Jerome, strip off the whole joker mythos and just look at the little we have about his character  ..

Gotham as a rich buffet ..  I like that ;D

*catches up on some outstanding discussions*

Re: Jeremiah’s Bruce obsession as something he took from his brother - I have decided to completely reject that idea! :p Simply because I adore the interpretation that Jeremiah’s obsession with Bruce is personal and completely his own far too much! (so fuck Jim and his claim to the contrary :p)

Honestly though, I feel like there’s enough in the show to point to Jeremiah emotionally connecting to Bruce on his own, not even just with the project (which he and Bruce were apparently working on closely enough together for staff at Wayne Tower to not be surprised when Jeremiah showed up there, I will add) - there was a little moment when they first met too in which Jeremiah seemed emotionally affected by Bruce’s words to him about the need to go along with the plan to take down Jerome and stuff. So, yeah, I’m totally down for Jeremiah coming to honestly care for/about Bruce in a way Jerome never did (and on the flip side - Bruce caring for/about Jeremiah in a way he never did for Jerome).

As with most things in fiction though, there’s no single way of understanding things when it comes to Jeremiah’s character so, YMMV! :)

It´s certainly the better story. I don´t know why I´m partly .. 

Cameron’s Twitter Pt. 2

Various hair tests. Pure green was off-limits to us (as well as the name “Joker”), a decision from high-up as they wanted to reserve these for films. A decision which ultimately I respect. They did not want to dilute the very lucrative brand. It allowed for creativity on our end.

AHEM

@gotham-bound

@afacefortelevision same but now it’s got me curious 😶

@rainbowspousesjerome

I imagine Cameron would have come up with some terrifying stuff for that boy’s diary

God, I wanna see

Oh dang .. can he like .. write and publish this .................  (and with write I mean type .. because nope .. not gonna try read through something looking like the prop on the show .... )

Awkward.

#gotham spoilers #gotham parallels #I very much approve of this as a running gag #if we do get another season #I’m gonna need AT LEAST one more of these pls :p  (tags by @littlehollyleaf )

I kind of wonder who’d be the one to continue the gag next season. Scarecrow? Babs? Dare I say it… Oswald?

I can see Zsasz maybe? And when it fails he whips out a couple of guns and is all ‘well fuck it guess I’ll have to kill the whole building by hand!’ :p