Do I Really Look Like a Guy With a Plan?
"Stop looking at the moves. Look at the board!" Not something you'd expect a five year old to really understand. But not many five year olds play chess with a grand master to earn breakfast. Hunger is a wonderful incentive. Sometimes the boy even won.
It wasn't surprising those words, so often repeated, were the first words he remembered. Not whispers of affection, a mother's love or a father's tenderness. An admonishment to never lose sight of the big picture. Never forget that the object of the game was to win. And in order to win, one must never stop looking at the board as a whole.
Eventually he became good enough that he could see the entire board in his head. Then he had to learn patterns. Patterns, he was told, were easy to predict. In chess there were a finite amount of moves to each game. Each game was begun with one move. That set the pattern which narrowed with each successive move until someone who could see patterns and the board could predict the outcome of the game after two or three moves.
Of course there were arguments about unpredictability and character analysis and how the patterns of chess applied to life.
He found that by watching people, paying attention to the details and remaining quiet, that he could often predict their behavior. Not always. But often enough.
Life wasn't idyllic. Beatings weren't uncommon. Hunger was a constant. At least until he learned to steal. Stealing cars was...oddly exhilarating.
Eventually he was caught. And he was punished. After he was released from prison. Prison itself wasn't considered a punishment. The curtailment of certain freedoms opened opportunities for networking and his knowledge of the criminal classes expanded exponentially.
His punishment gave him the perfect excuse to don a mask and go merrily about sowing chaos in his wake. An agent of chaos. it was a fun title. And he certainly did his best to live up to his appearance. He frightened people now, simply by looking at them, they were unnerved. Setting their nerves jangling even further with a different story every time just made life even more fun. The truth...well that was for him and him alone. Making a story up to suit the mood of the room each time...well that was theatrics. Theatrics were something he could appreciate and use to his advantage.
It was honestly amusing how all the people in the city took his actions at face value. They didn't see or sense the narrowing of the pattern. The slow tightening of the noose they'd put around their own necks. They thought he was insane, like a mad dog, biting at everything and everyone around him.
Which was just the way he liked it. After all... who would ever expect a mad dog to be capable of a chess master's plan?
He was a little surprised actually. Surely there was someone in the city who had noticed his little bank heist went off without a hitch? Or that he'd managed to subvert the mob to his purposes? Not even the city's new Commissioner noticed that the District Attorney was losing the battle with his own brand of madness. Really, kidnapping a prisoner and subjecting him to mental torture was not the sort of thing a White Knight should be doing.
And when he was being interrogated by Batman himself, locked in a cell, watched from behind the so obvious two way mirror, he still found it hard to believe that no one had caught on. Did they really think that all these events were simple good fortune? Chance? Or were they so flummoxed by the events of each day that they didn't have it in them to see the big picture?
He had hopes, for a moment, when the hideously maimed Harvey Dent accused him of causing the death of Rachel Dawes by his plan. But even he had sunk back into the peculiar blindness of a normal citizen. Harvey Dent was the result of months of meticulous planning and work and he didn't even realize it.
He chuckled to himself as he left the hospital moments after Harvey Dent hauled his burnt carcass out of the hospital bed. "Do I really look like a guy with a plan?" He couldn't help the laugh that bubbled up in his throat. "Why yes Jack, actually, yes you do."
Author's Note: So my husband and I love to analyze the Joker in this movie and how everything you really need to know about him you can learn from how he pulls that bank job in the opening of the movie. Everything is planned out. And for the rest of the movie he does the same thing. All the chaos that ensues is part of his plan.