It's a typical sunshine-y day and I open up Tumblr to yet again see that "The Joker and Harley aren't relationship goals," "The Joker was abusive to Harley," "The Joker held Harley back as a character!" Oh, but contraire my little ducklings. Because if you've actually read the comics or analyzed this relationship at all then maybe you'd know a thing or two about how wrong you are.

The most common anti-Joker and Harley argument out there right now is that The Joker is an abusive asshole toward Harley Quinn and that he tricked her into becoming who she is. Everyone blames everything on him, but that's actually one of the least accurate depictions I've ever heard of the relationship, because truth be told Harleen Quinzel had always been looking to be someone else, and she always was that way. The Joker never actually abused her to get her to become who she is, a lot of it just came from them talking. Harleen fell in love with him as who he was, and she knew all of the terrible things he'd done. But she wanted that for herself. I believe that people just want to find a reason for Harley to seem weak, but she was never weak and she knew exactly what she was getting into.

The story is told in different adaptions in many different ways, but let's look at Suicide Squad since it's the first time the two clowns have been in a non-animated cinematic release together. In this story, Harley, still Harleen, brings The Joker gifts, speaks to him, and gets to know him. She begins to fall in love with him, and whenever he asks her for a machine gun she willingly helps break him out of Arkham. Though he goes to hurt her, and definitely does, the idea here is that Harley winds up enjoying the pain and begs for more of it. This scene wasn't kept in the movie, however it's on a list of deleted scenes and is included in the novelization and this tendency of Harley enjoying pain also shows up in the animated movie about Task Force X, Assault on Arkham. The Riddler helps to deactivate the bombs placed in Task Force X's necks with a pulse of electricity and Harley specifically starts to laugh because of how much she's actually enjoying it.

This then calls into question the very idea that Harley is being abused at all because she enjoys it and also gives it. What people make the mistake of is thinking that only The Joker tortures Harley ever, yet in Batman Adventures Volume 2, Issue 3 titled, My Boyfriend's Back, The Joker turns into a lovey dovey mess where all he can do is be kind to Harley. She literally tries to get him killed and harm him just because she hates him that way. Harley doesn't want The Joker to be kind and get her flowers (which he does); maybe that's what you want him to do, but you're not Harley Quinn, are you?

People seem to like to forget that Harley, at the end of it all, is just as crazy if not crazier than The Joker and so they relate her to themselves so easily that they forget she's a fictional character. Maybe they aren't "#RelationshipGoals," but that doesn't mean that the love they have isn't real. It may be a twisted love, one that is unconventional, but it exists. That isn't for anyone to decide.

It is sad that The New 52 version of DC has decided to fall into the grasps of the masses and has tossed this idea that The Joker and Harley have a strange obsession for each other. With amazing art, they disappoint in character development and actual story. In a comic released back in February (Harley Quinn, Volume 2, Issue 25), they had Harley go into where Joker was being held and yell at him for being "abusive" toward her.

But if you've read any of the comics pre-The New 52, seen any of the animated releases at all, then you would know that all of this is complete bullshit. First of all, this isn't only out of character for Harley, but also out of character for The Joker. In a comic from literally any other era of DC, Harley would be there to break him out, she wouldn't ever say he disgusted her, and that kiss wouldn't have been forced. With this horrible representation of these two characters, the writers of the Harley Quinn comics during The New 52 era did that thing where they cater to people so that they can make people happy, but instead they wound up shutting down Harley's character and completely dismissing everything that she actually is. People don't give Harley credit for not getting abused, because she wasn't, she liked what happened to her, she asked for it. I can see, of course, that this is hard to understand psychologically, especially if a reader has no sort of grasp on character analysis or no solid background on the character that they try to defend and maybe that's why so many people are so easily disgusted by it instead of intrigued by the fact that two people could be so crazy and yet feel some sort of love for each other.

Another thing that people seem to often times forget is the fact that Harley is a strong character, with or without The Joker around. Something that's made me unbelievably angry and appalled is the decision by critics that in the movie Harley wasn't as strong of a character just because she had scenes with The Joker. But, to me, she shines no matter what scene she is in because often times female villain characters are just shown as "ice cold bitches," or, "hot and sexy psychopaths". Harley Quinn is not either one of these things because she's just plain crazy, but is also a person not a stereotype. She isn't shown to be sexualized, that's just the way she is, and in that scene with her getting dressed where she says "What?", it's literally because it shouldn't be that big of a deal that she's putting on a top. And honestly, if you can't deal with watching a person put a shirt on, then there's something wrong with you.

But if I still haven't convinced you, let me just let you in on a scene from Suicide Squad's novelization:

This isn't want formed from anything like abuse or Stockholm Syndrome, this is something that Harleen decided even before she became Harley Quinn. In the text there's nothing about him pushing her in, nothing about her doing it because she doesn't want to be with him. She does it because she wants to be reborn just like him in the same chemical where he was born. She wants to be like him, she wants to be more than him. Just because he hits her, just because there are some comics where he holds her by her throat does not mean he's abusing her, not if that's what she wants, what she signed up for.

To say that Harley is getting abused is almost like saying that she's dumb. But Harley was an incredibly intelligent psychiatrist who worked with The Joker of all people. She understood him, she liked what he was selling, he offered her a power and a love that she wanted to have. It wasn't that she was falling into a trap, but that that was just the way she was. Until people understand this they can't understand her character. Harley Quinn is not an anti-hero, she's a villain, the Queen of Gotham.

Maybe, though, your problem isn't Harley at all, and maybe it is instead the fact that you don't think The Joker could love. I think that you'd be right, if you were The Joker because he's the one who constantly denies the fact that he could be. See, Joker doesn't want to be in love with Harley, he wants to think of her like his pet, and so he does. But he could have just let her die, he could've killed her whenever he wanted to, he didn't ever need a sidekick, especially not one who he considered to be the queen to his king. However, he chooses to keep her around, and within the novelization of Suicide Squad there's a whole process of why. Just because he's crazy doesn't mean he can't love, and he and Harley have the same sense of love. A theory I have for the reason The Joker inexplicably hurts Harley is to try to reassure himself that he doesn't love her, after all he's never felt it before.

I think maybe the best comic reference I can provide is then these two pages from Batman: Harley Quinn. In this comic, Harley Quinn's starting has little to do with The Joker at all other than the fact that she does fall in love with him. This time, she just lets him go and then the people at Arkham check her in. Then, later, she finds Joker after getting released from the asylum by accident dressed as Harley Quinn and she immediately starts doing things for him and they even begin a romantic relationship. Though he never asks her to and never coerces her and never even touches her.

But then The Joker gets threatened and he sends her off in a rocket, however she winds up coming straight back and fighting him because of it and basically teaches him a lesson that she's not to be messed with.

The thing is is that this apology was probably genuine and she completely accepted it, mainly because he explains to Harley that he was sending her away because he couldn't care for anyone. Having a weakness wouldn't be good for him because before her he really didn't have any weaknesses. Then he makes up for it by allowing her to use her own plan to wreak some havoc.

Even in Suicide Squad, Batman takes Harley to Belle Reve because of his following explanation, "Joker took something important from me. It’s my turn." Which means even Batman, who knows The Joker better than most people, believes he really does love and care for Harley Quinn.

Now we come to the ending of me attempting to defend this relationship, and mainly Harley's integrity, and of course I'm sure the backlash I'll get from this is those of you saying that I don't know anything about domestic abuse. But before you say that, I actually know quite a lot about it as a survivor of it. That's how I know that people bullshit their way through the understanding of Harley's character and her relationship with The Joker; a lot of people who have never once been abused during their lifetime are among the culprits, but so are people who think that fictional characters hold the answers for their own struggles.

Harley Quinn is a great character, no wonder so many people like her. But that doesn't mean that she's an anti-hero, and that she's not someone who doesn't enjoy awful things. Basically, she's a whole lotta crazy, and so is The Joker, that's why they are perfect together. So please, stop posting articles about how they "aren't goals" because of abuse, using the same comic strips over and over again to defend this idea.