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There is nothing wrong with shipping Joker and Harley

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In any case Batman/Joker is the OTP.
the_kiss____bat_and_joker_by_pydiyudie.jpg

Am I doing this right?
 
In a story about an impressionable woman falling in love with a psychopath and eventually becoming his accomplice, there's basically four obvious places you can take her character arc:

1) She becomes even worse than him, either killing him or getting both of them caught/killed in the process.
2) She escapes the situation a hollow shell, maybes kills herself.
3) She dies tragically abandoned in a ditch somewhere by her lover
4) She's arrested and eventually cooperates with law enforcement when, with newfound perspective, she realizes how one-sided the relationship was and that he's never going to come for her, resulting in his arrest/death.

obviously there are better and more nuanced ways to go with it, but you're not gonna get that with Harley either.

the problem is (serial) comic book character arcs and deaths are meaningless because they'll always regress or retcon to maintain the status quo because serial storytelling is lame and comic books are stuck in a weird target demo netherworld.

OP if you enjoy Joker and Harley's dynamic I reccomend these movies/things (spoilersish):
Stoker
Natural Born Killers
God Bless Ameirca (MAYBE)
Killer Joe
Death Note (lol)

There's wasn't really like a vacuum for male-centric Batman merchandise considering that the main character is a guy. :P That's what I think Harley Quinn is currently filling in a way Batgirl and Catwoman (and Poision Ivy to a lesser degree) never did.

Yeah I agree with you. Harley is a very well (visually) designed character, very distinct from Joker (compared to Batgirl (and catwoman) who to most people just looks like Sexy Batman (Poison Ivy is literally just a naked lady with some vines and twigs glued to her, completely unmarketable)), and it's easier for most people to ignore the inherent lewdness of female comic book characters since she's a supervillain.
 
Why do so many nerdy fathers name their daughters Harley? It's kinda creepy.
I was actually thinking about naming my soon-to-be-born son Harley. That is because I have liked the name Harley for a boy ever since being introduced to Harvey "Harley" Kiener on Boy Meets World. Then my mother reminded me of people naming their daughters that and how it is a more common girl's name. That isn't enough to completely dissuade me but I have some other names I like better at the moment.
 
I never understood why Harley was on the Suicide Squad. Her background is that she is the Joker's psychiatrist. How exactly does that qualify her to be on a team of elite assassins? Has DC retconned her into being an Ex-Navy Seal or something?

Suicide Squad has always been more like B and C list villains getting a "second" chance
at cleaning up their act. some are good at what they do, others not as much. except for a few they aren't elite assassins.
 
Harley is no more of a role model than Deadpool or Tank Girl.

Why can't people stan She Hulk or Storm or Power Girl or someone who's not a murderous sub?
 
Someone please say this was retconned. :P
Well now Joker is not a single entity but THREE characters, so maybe one of them really loved her, and that last psycho joker is just wacky, because he's a psychotic, non funny killer. The real joker is the second one I think, and he's MIA (Just like the golden age one).
 
Harley is no more of a role model than Deadpool or Tank Girl.

Why can't people stan She Hulk or Storm or Power Girl or someone who's not a murderous sub?

Squirrel Girl is the best role model EVER

She is majoring in squirrels computer systems, try to solve all her problems without violence, has a cool pet and does not have a body that fits the beauty standards
 
A 'u wot m8?' thread if I ever seen one!

Spent my time reading the op totally confused about the term "shipping". Once it was explained by another poster all I could think about was the ridiculous nature of the discussion at hand. Also, the way the op is written makes it feel as if I just turned up in the middle of a deep conversation.
 
Harley is no more of a role model than Deadpool or Tank Girl.

Why can't people stan She Hulk or Storm or Power Girl or someone who's not a murderous sub?

people already whine and shit on power girl for her outfit and the boob window.

So no they're not really going to stan for her.

I do though.
 
There's a legacy there. Even if you don't find them entertaining as characters together, they're iconic as that couple on just a basic pop culture level, so if people celebrate that then that's fine.

They're also villains. The fucked up dynamic between them is kind of the point.
 
Who the hell would think of Harley Quinn as a role model?

Some people feel that any fictional characters that belong to real-world protected groups must always be positive role models, even when they're antagonists.
the fact that tumblr friends relate to HARLEY QUINN of all people should speak volumes about the quality of their character
 
I thought they were good together. Horrible people gravitating to each other's lunacy. Actually, I remember an episode that was interesting in the animated series where supposedly some schmuck killed Batman, and it's just Joker and Harley shooting the breeze. She couldn't understand his fixation on Bats but regardless tried to at least console him. Mainly by killing Bat's murderer...is how I believe it went.
 
Some people feel that any fictional characters that belong to real-world protected groups must always be positive role models, even when they're antagonists.
the fact that tumblr friends relate to HARLEY QUINN of all people should speak volumes about the quality of their character

Speaks volumes about their relationships.

You don't need to be an arkham psyquiatrist to know that obssesivaly wanting Harley to be someone better and to not come back to the abusive relantionship again speaks volumes about someone's traumas and reality.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km9_hkx0Fb0

Joker x Harley is completely toxic on every level, but it also works because they're both completely insane. But its also gross and sad.

This episode blew my mind when I was a kid.

"Did he just slap her in the middle of an argument?"

"Holy crap he just threw her out of a window, she's totally dead, and she still blamed herself."

So on the nose with its depiction of abuse victims, there was nothing like this in children's television.
 
Speaks volumes about their relationships.

You don't need to be an arkham psyquiatrist to know that obssesivaly wanting Harley to be someone better and to not come back to the abusive relantionship again speaks volumes about someone's traumas and reality.

this would be so different if it was like, a female sidekick who's constantly getting negged, manipulated or even slapped around by her anti-villain(?) counterpart or something. (this would actually be a great story, if anyone wants to write it i'll ink/color that shit for you i stg)

As it is, there's no reason to care if Harley is being abused or not while she's killing people other than the voyeuristic drama of it. She's irredeemable. She's not an anti-hero or an anti-villain, she's just a villain. There's no moral nuance or subtlety there.

edit: although tbh i hate serialized storytelling with a passion. None of these things would be an issue if these characters and stories actually had a true middle and end. Nobody would have time to be a Harley Quinn Reform Advocate
(HQRA??? (please take my life before the discourse takes my soul))
if her whole story only lasted 1~5 real years. By the end of the story she'd either redeem herself in some way (cooperating with the police? being confronted by the families of her victims and truly accepting responsibility? killing the joker and riding off into the sunset?) or she wouldn't, and that would be it and it would be great. As it is, any act of redemption is fake and hollow because no matter what they have to keep using her character and she has to keep killing people to sell books. Because they are obligated to keep making books about her until people stop buying them, and nobody wants to read a comic about Harley Quinn living anonymously on a farm and working at a grocery store in Montana.
 
It's kinda strange seeing how heroic she's portrayed considering she still murders innocent children in her current run that's barely two years old.


Squirrel Girl is the best role model EVER

She is majoring in squirrels computer systems, try to solve all her problems without violence, has a cool pet and does not have a body that fits the beauty standards

Didn't that change recently? I remember seeing a few covers where she's drawn like any other sexy female character.
 
Squirrel Girl is the best role model EVER

She is majoring in squirrels computer systems, try to solve all her problems without violence, has a cool pet and does not have a body that fits the beauty standards

I just caught up with Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. The sooner she gets into the MCU, the better.

She-Hulk is pretty close, but not in the tweeny hot topic friendly way that Harley and Deadpool are.

tbh i feel like i know everything i need to know about a person by their opinion on she-hulk

Honestly from what little I've read, I feel like Gwenpool is Marvel's desperate attempt to capture the Harley crowd.

It's kinda strange seeing how heroic she's portrayed considering she still murders innocent children in her current run that's barely two years old.





Didn't that change recently? I remember seeing a few covers where she's drawn like any other sexy female character.

Yikes. I feel like there's eventually going to be another Starfire situation with how she's promoted for media like a fun, crazy antihero, but then when kids want to read comics to find out more they'll be in for quite a shock.

Also Unbeatable is the latest version of SG and AFAIK, there hasn't been any real "comic book sexy" Squirrel Girl.
 
Is it still shipping if it's canon? I'm not very informed about either character but haven't they almost always been depicted as a couple?
 
Maybe by shipping they mean Joker actually reciprocating the affection genuinely? I've never seen him actually care about her unless he's pretending in order to manipulate her.
 
Is it still shipping if it's canon? I'm not very informed about either character but haven't they almost always been depicted as a couple?

Yeah I got kind of confused too, but I do believe that in recent comics, Harley kind of came to her senses about the abuse and decided to avoid being with Joker anymore. I think some of the images shared earlier in the thread are events that directly led to that decision, like where she's chained up to the wall in the room full of corpses and it's explained that she's not the only Harley.

I don't know if that got reversed or not in recent character arcs or with the DC Universe Rebirth crossover event/soft reboot...

But I still wonder if the term ship applies to it since it was technically a thing for so long and so inherent to Harley's character origins in the canon?

I guess the ship term can be used to describe people that kind of experiment with the idea of them still being together or are still eager to see them together -- resistant to the fact that they're currently separated and that new media featuring Harley often has her separate from Joker (kind of occurs in the Injustice game and I think it will happen in Suicide Squad).
 
There's this weird culture I've seen around shippers where if you see someone ship something you don't get behind then you try to come up with some way that relationship would be abusive in order to attempt to I guess stop them? It's honestly kind of gross.

A nice spin on it is when people try to accuse people of being homophobic if they ship a character with a character of the opposite sex when they themselves ship them with a character of the same sex.

Shipping is a bizarre, bizarre culture. Sometimes you get some funny fan art out of it though.
 
Honestly from what little I've read, I feel like Gwenpool is Marvel's desperate attempt to capture the Harley crowd.

the rest of my life has just been made measurably worse by finding out that this is a thing. I never want to see a comic book again for as long as i live

There's this weird culture I've seen around shippers where if you see someone ship something you don't get behind then you try to come up with some way that relationship would be abusive in order to attempt to I guess stop them? It's honestly kind of gross.

A nice spin on it is when people try to accuse people of being homophobic if they ship a character with a character of the opposite sex when they themselves ship them with a character of the same sex.

Shipping is a bizarre, bizarre culture. Sometimes you get some funny fan art out of it though.

i ship THE DISCOURSE with NEOGAF USER EUMI
 
There's this weird culture I've seen around shippers where if you see someone ship something you don't get behind then you try to come up with some way that relationship would be abusive in order to attempt to I guess stop them? It's honestly kind of gross.

A nice spin on it is when people try to accuse people of being homophobic if they ship a character with a character of the opposite sex when they themselves ship them with a character of the same sex.

Shipping is a bizarre, bizarre culture. Sometimes you get some funny fan art out of it though.

I've seen this. Overwatch has it bad.

Shipping culture is fucking dumb.
 
the rest of my life has just been made measurably worse by finding out that this is a thing. I never want to see a comic book again for as long as i live

I'm in the same boat. I didn't know about this until now. Been a bit out of touch with comics for the majority of the past year, and, well... ick.
 
I think a lot of the issue people have with Harley and the Jokers relationship will be either resolved or exasperated by how the movie handles it. In the Comics Harley loves the Joker, abandons everything to be with him and then he locks her up and leaves her to die. The only time he comes after her is when she rips the skin off her hands to get out of the locks and escape.

The movie might just be a superhero movie, but it might also be used to highlight the problems with an abusive relationship. Hell one of the reasons Joker turns up to chase Harley again, is because he finds out she might be entering a normal healthy relationship with someone.
 
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