SDCowboy
Member
It's getting to the point where learn at least one new slang term a week on GAF. lol
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There is nothing wrong with shipping Joker and Harley
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It's getting to the point where learn at least one new slang term a week on GAF. lol
Unspeakable Evil
Member
Is it really shipping if its already a relationship? 
And it is better than Gotham
Diprosalic
Banned
There's everything wrong with shipping in general.
itwasTuesday
He wasn't alone.
Just sign up for Amazon prime. Free, two day.
I don't think she was, I find her much more entertaining by herself.
She's a side kick to a character in, in all honesty no longer find that interesting.
game harley isn't that interesting. even with the post death revenge motive.
I never said she was lesser, I did say she lacked agency because of her situation and in my opinion and to the people who make the comic's opinion it seems it did nothing for her character. And it has proven to not be needed in its entirety
Maybe people wanna see a cool girl do a cool thing and not be smacked around.
I don't think i said that. What I did say was, there were people in a position of influence who saw girls liked this character and went and decided it might be better to get that character out of her situation and allow her to exist on her own. She's being marked to young girls like strait up, I don't think no one is saying a character can't have been broken down or been through some shit to be a good character. But what i'm saying, seeing that character get through that and become her own independent person. Might be better for some groups invovled.
Not anymore comics change
General popularity of that character dissagrees with you
Getting over abuse is interesting story telling for many. Its the cornerstone of a lot of entertainment actually.
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Welp the show is on and the source material moved on, what are you going to do?
Whatever floats your boat dude, I would just say I wouldn't die on this hill
Astral Dog
Member
If Harley is so over The Joker, she should go back to being a psychiatrist.
or Batmans sidesick
Lights and Waves
Member
There's nothing inherently wrong with enjoying this pairing. I just think it's wrong to romanticize it as something more than an unhealthy, abusive relationship.
PeskyToaster
Member
Fiction isn't here to translate Tumblr into GAF and now we have chaos.
LordOfLore
Banned
That's her day job nowadays. Even supposed to be part of her role in the new Suicide Squad Rebirth book. Unlike the TAS version this Harley didn't cheat to get good grades and a nice job at Arkham.
UncleSporky
Member
John Kowalski
Banned
Good guys are rapists too, you are bad person!
Oh why ruin GAF's routine Tumblr/millennial-shitting? Every generation likes to feel superior to the next.
She is drawn sexy when she is in the Avengers team that she entered because she is becoming popular. And then artists who can't draw a normal women even if their lifes depend on it drawing squirrel girl like
or less worst like
Where she NEEDS to be a "fat bottomed girl" like in the queen song because
She grew popular as Joker's girlfriend without any concerted push from DC, she wouldn't have gotten so big if she didn't work in that role.
She's more than a sidekick to that character, her whole persona is literally modeled after him. You can dislike the Joker, but you can't escape the fact that her whole existence is meant as an addendum to him, in and out of the comics. As long as she goes around as "Harley Quinn", she's an extension of the Joker. Hell, even the guy in your avatar is cribbing off him the Joker in some ways.
Game Harley was written by the guy who created her in the first place, is one of the most popular and well known versions of her character, and was in general a lot of fun to see in the story modes across the 4 games. You're entitled to your opinion though.
Harley doesn't lack agency. She continually chooses to be with the Joker. It's not like he's forcing himself on her, she always ends up crawling back to him. And you didn't say "lesser", but you sure as hell implied it. You said "Maybe we should use this opportunity to present i dunno... female characters better in general", which implies Harley Quinn is a "bad" female character in the way that she was presented before. Because what, she chose to be in an unhealthy relationship? She isn't making the best life choices? There is a severe lack of interesting female villains in DC as it is, why do we have to make Harley into an aspirational figure?
There are a ton of other characters for that, why do we have to homogenize every female DC character? Just because a character is a woman, doesn't mean she has to have all her shit together. That seems reductive and is actually worse for women in comics if we think that way.
This is where we diverge I guess. I don't think creators have a social responsibility to their audience. What you're advocating for is "Prominent female characters can't be in unhealthy relationships because that might send the wrong message to girls reading", and that's just stifling. Readers aren't stupid, they fell in love with Harley before without thinking she and the Joker were a healthy couple. Stories shouldn't be entirely written in service to social messages, but rather in service to what makes good story telling. Having Harley adopt a supervillain persona entirely to appease another character, but then separate from that character and act on her own, still committing crime, still using that persona, but being entirely dedicated to the nebulous motivation of being "random", isn't a good message or a bad message, it's nonmessage. It says nothing, and it's shallow as hell. It also isn't very fun to watch/read for more than 5 minutes. The irony here is that the most powerful "Anti-abuse" Harley stories are the ones where she's still with the Joker.
Sometimes for the better... sometimes for the worse.
Just because something is popular, doesn't make it good. The suicide squad comic is popular, but it also features the Joker having made a ton of other "Harleys" before the current one we have now. That's basically garbage, but it's popular, so I guess it's actually good according to you right?
It's a story that's been told 1000 times before with characters more well suited towards it. Harder to sympathize with an abuse victim when she's committing crime under the persona she created specifically to appeal to him.
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Not quite. The comics have Harley on her own, but the games, shows, and movie will have them together. What I'm going to do is enjoy those and throw my voice in the discourse advocating for them.
Who's dying on a hill? It's an argument based on the entirely subjective notion on where a fictional character's story should go. It's an irrelevant clash of opinions between willing participants, nobody's getting hurt.
hodayathink
Member
She is drawn sexy when she is in the Avengers team that she entered because she is becoming popular. And then artists who can't draw a normal women even if their lifes depend on it drawing squirrel girl like
or less worst like
Where she NEEDS to be a "fat bottomed girl" like in the queen song because
Unbeatable is really the only time in her history that she was drawn as not conventionally attractive. Even in GLA, she wasn't drawn in the "va-va-voom" way that most women in comics are, but she was always slender and, at worst, moderately attractive.
MMaRsu
Member
Oh why ruin GAF's routine Tumblr/millennial-shitting? Every generation likes to feel superior to the next.
Yeah shortening words really makes you look cool and hip.
I mean, as long as people aren't holding it up as a positive or idealized relationship...Harley was created specifically to be the Joker's girlfriend. She's a mob moll. That was the whole point of her at inception. This relationship is canon. I don't even understand how it's shipping. Harley Quinn is a walking metaphor for domestic abuse. Mad Love made that pretty clear.
Now, she could move past that and become a bigger person in the end, but that wouldn't change her origins at all or the fact that a relationship with the Joker is part and parcel with that. Personally, I really loved Gotham Sirens. To me, that's the best Harley has ever been and given how stupidly mismanaged she's been as a character for years, I imagine it's the best she'll ever be.
Now, she could move past that and become a bigger person in the end, but that wouldn't change her origins at all or the fact that a relationship with the Joker is part and parcel with that. Personally, I really loved Gotham Sirens. To me, that's the best Harley has ever been and given how stupidly mismanaged she's been as a character for years, I imagine it's the best she'll ever be.
I think some of you guys might understand the concept of shipping better if you spent time in fandom spaces where women are the majority.
I don't think shippers think of themselves as or are concerned with looking cool or hip.
TheRedSnifit
Member
If my girlfriend said "We should kidnap a child and subject him to three weeks of electrical and chemical torture to spite my rivals," I'd be a pretty bad person for going along with that even though it wasn't my idea.
PeskyToaster
Member
I think some of you guys might understand the concept of shipping better if you spent time in fandom spaces where women are the majority.
I don't think shippers think of themselves as or are concerned with looking cool or hip.
Shipping discussions are to women like Vs. debates are to men?
Pretty much. Of course you'll see guys shipping and girls getting into heated arguments about power levels, but shipping is more accepted or central in certain spaces and vs. debates in others. Not hard to see where NeoGAF falls into.
Which is why Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is the best comic =D
I think some of you guys might understand the concept of shipping better if you spent time in fandom spaces where women are the majority.
...like Tumblr and in most game spaces tumblr is almost used as a cursing =P
Funny story, a friend of mine (who I hate for a variety of reasons) actually wrote an article on why he thinks there's stuff wrong with shipping the two of them entitled "The Over-Sexualization of Harley Quinn." Somehow it got shared on Facebook 73,000 times so there must be some audience that agrees with him. Then again, I bet if the article he wrote where he implied that Creed and Mad Max: Fury Road were enough for black and female representation in media was shared that much, he'd be vilified lol.
More on topic though (although I think that article is slightly relevant), I don't think there's anything wrong with shipping the two, because shipping is utterly harmless unless you get control of the media, in which case I believe you should try to be somewhat impartial. Unless it's like incest-shipping which is a total no-go for me for obvious reasons. Harley and the Joker can be together in your headcanon despite their domestic abuse history, but I'll also agree that if you look at it as an ideal relationship, that might not be the best idea.
More on topic though (although I think that article is slightly relevant), I don't think there's anything wrong with shipping the two, because shipping is utterly harmless unless you get control of the media, in which case I believe you should try to be somewhat impartial. Unless it's like incest-shipping which is a total no-go for me for obvious reasons. Harley and the Joker can be together in your headcanon despite their domestic abuse history, but I'll also agree that if you look at it as an ideal relationship, that might not be the best idea.
When you say you can do whatever you want and it is harmless than the "incest is a no go for obvious reasons" than your reasons aren't so obvious.
What is that fictional incest has that fictional abusive relationships don't ?
Tread the Supernatural fandom with caution.
I realize that I probably should've been clearer, but I presume that in the hypothetical situation I'm talking about, where someone is shipping Joker and Harley and writing fanfiction of them getting together (because to be honest, fanfiction is where most of my knowledge of shipping comes from), they're not going to write out an abusive relationship fanfiction, right? If they want Joker and Harley to be together, I'd hope most fans will write it so at most they're playfully teasing each other, not the outright physical and emotional abuse Joker has given to Harley several times over in their actual history.
Whereas an incest relationship to me just seems really wrong regardless of how you're gonna write it. I remember when I was younger and going through a "read a lot of fanfiction" phase and I came across a ZukoxIroh shipfic (Avatar: The Last Airbender) and it was just disturbing as all get-out to me. I don't know, it's probably a personal thing where incest just freaks me out more, but let me put it a different way: I could see someone writing a fanfiction about Joker and Harley getting together in a healthy relationship, ignoring all the canon evidence of the abusive relationship, and still have Joker and Harley relatively be in character. Reading, let's say, a Hunger Games fanfiction, where Katniss and Prim start dating each other, wouldn't be right because 1. Incest just feels very wrong to me, and I understand that's my personal package, but 2. I honestly don't see anyway you could write that feels true to the characters. I hope that's an okay feeling to have because I understand the outright statement of "incest is worse than abusive relationships" does have unfortunate implications, but I'd hope shippers aren't rooting for abusive relationships.
(And sorry for the Hunger Games example; I couldn't think of any fandom that had strong brother-sister relationships besides it and Avatar and I already had used the Zuko and Iroh thing as an example.)
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