I WANT TO KNOW THE STORY BEHIND THIS. I HONESTLY THOUGHT THEY WERE LOVERS.
Okay, okay, so short version:
Joker seduced Harley while he was in Arkham and she was his psychologist. He did so by manipulating sessions to make him seem pitiable.
Harley broke Joker out. Joker was originally going to kill her then, but fans had latched onto Harley Quinn’s new look and she was a fan favorite (mind you as I recall, she was originally introduced in BTAS, and then transferred to the comics later). So she ended up surviving his first murder attempt.
He decided that although annoying she could still be useful (since she’s actually brilliant, and at this point somewhat codependent). This leads to a string of horrific abuses and murder attempts. Including (in the TV show alone) throwing her through a window that is at *least* three stories up, choking her, beating her with a hammer, threatening her with one of his gag guns (which, depending on the gun, may or may not kill her in various ways), and attempting to get hyenas to eat her.
In the comics, it includes starving her, chaining her to a wall in a sewer on top of corpses of “failed Harleys,” poisoning her, leaving her in burning buildings, pushing her into the line of police fire, gaslighting her basically every time he fails to kill her, and the list goes on. When she becomes pregnant with her and Joker’s kid, she leaves for nine months, to her sister’s place, and gives birth there. She doesn’t tell Joker about the kid (and goes out of her way to prevent Joker from finding out). She tells Canary that it’s because Mr. J would be too busy for a kid, but if you pay attention to Harley’s behavior throughout the comic, the clear subtext is “My kid would end up dead or worse if Joker knew about her.”
Additionally, post break up, she notes he was abusive, says it wasn’t love, it was manipulation, and frequently describes it as the worst part of her life.
I’m no expert but I remember one more thing… she said he never noticed she was gone for those 9 months.
uhhhh sounds like a love story to me??? what a passionate, ingriguing dynamic???
brisnova successfully completed! now that ive regained consciousness i want to give a huge thanks to everyone who visited me and supported me at baby’s first con, and also to my artist alley neighbours who were so fun to talk to (and whos art was so beautiful- behold!)
I think what probably gets me deeply into my feelings about this “JKR should have just made her students Of Color to start with, she can’t ret-con and pretend she did it right the first time” is that I grew up with Anne Rice and Anne McCaffery, two female fantasy writers who hated headcanons and fandom and sued people for deviating from their original vision or doing any kinds of derivative works without their express contractual permission.
I feel like people who get irritated with her about defending black!Hermione don’t appreciate how much healthier JKR’s attitude toward the inclusivity movement in her fandom is than theirs was. Or Moffat’s is. Or Gatiss’s. Or Whedon’s. Or Green’s. Or even, until very recently, Lucas’s.
She’s not a PCR, but goddamn, at least she’s passing us the milk rather than pissing in our cornflakes.
Jo is actually almost entirely responsible for fanfiction being what it is today.
BUT WAIT, I hear older fandomers cry. X-Files, Star Trek, Xena, how dare you. And yes, I say to those fandomers, you held those banners first! Be proud of the paths you forged. But Jo–
Jo did something no author or creator had ever done before.
She was a household name who encouraged fanfiction.
When I first began writing fanfiction in 1998, it was common practice to preface your fic with this massive disclaimer about how you weren’t selling it, and it was for fun, sometimes quoting the Fair Use part of the Creative Commons act, and even begging authors not to sue. Because in those days, that was a very real danger. Eleven-year-old me had reams of fanfiction on floppy disks I didn’t dare send to archives because I might get arrested and taken to Plagiarism Jail.
And then there was Jo. And no, Jo said, this is not a private amusement park at which you may stare longingly from the other side of wrought-iron gates. It is a giant sandbox. Here are my pails, here are my toys. Come sit and play with me. Eventually you may decide you like some other sandbox better, and all I ask is that you leave my toys here for others to play with, and not try to take them with you. But why should I lock you out of my sandbox? It is, after all, far more fun to play in a sandbox with many people than by yourself.
People were boggled. They didn’t get it. They thought she was crazy. And the fans? They kept loving, and writing, and drawing, and creating, and Jo kept loving them back. Potter Puppet Pals, A Very Potter Musical, Potter!, Remus and the Lupins, all stuff Jo just kind of went “whatever, they’re having fun.”
And attitudes began to change. And then someone else threw her lot in with Jo, someone who doesn’t get a lot of credit for contributing something massive to fandom culture and should:
Stephenie Meyer.
Yeah, you read that right. The goddamn author of Twilight, who refused to sue teenage girls who just wanted Bella to end up with Jacob. (And who is way more gracious than I would be about Fifty Shades.) She actually has a fanfiction archive right on her website! I’m serious: Smeyer has links to a personally-curated list of Twilight fanfiction she personally enjoyed or found interesting. Whatever you may think of her writing, that loving attitude of “we’re all here to have fun, I love that you love my world and my characters, please enjoy” was such a departure from the days of C&D letters and page-long disclaimers.
These two women changed the face of how fandom works forever. Yes, their work is flawed. They are products of their time and upbringing. But just the fact that they embrace the concepts of “my world as I see it and my world as you see it are not the same, and that’s not just okay, that’s good” is something to be celebrated.
I have a lot of issues with Meyer, but her treatment of fans is not one of them.
This is fascinating and all credit to Meyer and Rowling for being so instrumental in changing the culture. I do just want to add that the producers of Xena actually hired a fanfic writer to scriptwrite on their final season. As it often did (with a female TV action hero, with a musical episode), Xena helped to point the way.
“The
shoppers’ immediate response to the violent event ‘absolutely slowed’
investigation as it left authorities scanning through surveillance tapes
in pursuit of the single armed attacker.
The
few innocent yet armed individuals were eventually weeded out as
suspects, amid the several hour-long investigation which began Wednesday
night and into Thursday morning.
A
police spokesperson confirmed after the building had been deemed ‘safe
enough’ to enter, officials quickly began examining footage from inside
the supermarket, according to The Denver Post.
‘That’s
when we started noticing that a number of individuals had pulled
weapons,’ said Victor Avila, who works in part for the Thornton Police
Department.
‘At that point, as soon as
you see that, that’s the one you try to trace through the store, only to
maybe find out that’s not him, and we’re back to ground zero again,
starting to look again. That’s what led to the extended time.‘”
Oh! Oh, do I understand correctly that none of these innocent yet armed individuals went on to shoot the actual shooter? I feel faint with surprise
I am shocked. Stunned even. You mean all of those good guys with a gun didn’t do a damned thing. Quick, I need my smelling salts.
Oh but they COULD have done something!!! They VERY EASILY could have mistaken EACH OTHER as the Active Shooter and started a full blown firefight AMONGST THEMSELVES/Arriving Police.
The longer this infantile attidute about guns persists? The more shit like this is gonna happen and, INEVITABLY, SOMBODIE is going to pull a trigger. Then? Once THAT kind of adrenaline fueled/panic stricken shit STARTS? Luck/Fate will be the ONLY thing that determines who/how many get hurt or die.
You mean to tell me that not only did these people with guns not instantly fix the situation like the NRA and Rupublicans love to say they would, but they actually made it worse and weren’t American heroes ? NO WAY!
Was reading a different article and it linked to this one of reading Pearl as coded Asian, and I thought it was good so figured I’d share it for others to comment on.
My only comment (other than “yes, good”) is that I’m surprised they didn’t bring up the degree to which Pearl is very obviously a tengu. It’s one of the surprisingly few references to real-world mythology in the show, which feels significant?
I’ll confess, I’m not entirely sure what a tengu is, since I’m not off to snuff on my Japanese mythology. Care to elaborate?
I gave a read to wikipedia, and i found this:
Tengu are a type of legendary creature found in Japanese folk religion and […] the tengu were originally thought to take the forms of birds of prey, and they are traditionally depicted with both human and avian characteristics. The earliest tengu
were pictured with beaks, but this feature has often beenhumanized as
an unnaturally long nose, which today is widely considered the tengu’s defining characteristic in the popular imagination.
Buddhism long held that the tengu were disruptive demons and harbingers
of war. Their image gradually softened, however, into one of
protective, if still dangerous, spirits of the mountains and forests.
Beginning in the 13th century, tengu came to be associated in particular with the yamabushi, […] where tengu are most frequently depicted in the yamabushi’s distinctive costume, which includes a tokinand a pom-pommed sash (結袈裟 yuigesa).[6] Due to their priestly aesthetic, they are often shown wielding the Shakujo, a distinct staff used by Buddhist monks.
Staff (spear) + tokin, which is exactly where pearl’s gem is:
In folk tales, these fans sometimes have the ability to grow or shrink a
person’s nose, but usually they are attributed the power to stir up
great winds.
During the 14th century, […] the tengu became creatures associated with war.[33] Legends eventually ascribed to them great knowledge in the art of skilled combat.
This reputation seems to have its origins in a legend surrounding the famous warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune.
[…] This spirit taught the boy the art of swordsmanship so that he might bring vengeance on the Taira.[34]
During the Genpei War (1180–1185), in which theTaira clan was pitted against the Minamoto clan, thenaginata rose to a position of particularly high esteem, being regarded as an extremely effective weapon by warriors.[12]
A story […] tells of a girl with poor manual dexterity who is suddenly possessed by a tengu. The spirit wishes to rekindle the declining art of swordsmanship in the world. Soon a young samurai appears to whom the tengu has appeared in a dream, and the possessed girl instructs him as an expert swordsman.
[36]
team “I’m actually a very tactile person but only with specific people except I don’t want to make them uncomfortable so I don’t touch them and are therefore slightly touch starved”
isnt it funny how many things school taught us to hate that we as adults realize we like doing
like some people realize they actually really like math, others write hours-long essays on topics of their interests, i learned that i really fucking love researching
its like retrying a Bad Food years later and realizing that your taste buds were wrong, actually, but it was school that did the bad thing
