[ SECRET POST #5018 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5018 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



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02.
[Fleabag]


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03.
[The Princess Weiyoung]


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04. https://i.imgur.com/DRNtYh0.png
[OP warned for NSFW image]


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05.
[Ashes of Love]


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06.
[The essay: here
Mina de Malfois'livejournal: here]


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07.
[Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier]












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #718.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/sjm7b1G.png

[feotakahari]

Yeah, she did stuff like kidnap a hero and torture her for fun. She’s not exactly Female Deadpool.

[(Anonymous)]

When?

[feotakahari]

Looks like it was in the Harley Quinn comics, issue 17.

[(Anonymous)]

What volume/year?

[feotakahari]

Shit, I dunno. One of my mutuals is multiple, so I keep trying and failing to find good multiple characters to recommend to them. I found out about a multiple superhero named Thorn, and then I found out that the most relevant thing she’d done recently was when Harley Quinn kidnapped and tortured her. I don’t know any more than that.

[(Anonymous)]

that was the 2000 series, and thorn was attacking Harley and Ivy first.

[feotakahari]

I dunno. “Attacking” has a different sound to it than “torturing.”

[(Anonymous)]

DA - from Wikipedia:
When Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy moved to Metropolis, Thorn immediately attacked them. After a fierce battle, the women left Thorn hanging bound and gagged from a Superman statue in a local park for all of the citizens to see.[10] During a later confrontation, Harley and Ivy defeat Thorn again, this time kidnapping her and keeping her tied up in their garden. After removing the vines from her mouth, Harley drugs Thorn into revealing the secrets about her multiple personality. Ivy then tortures Thorn in order to prove that she's weak, eventually leaving her in the care of Bizarro while she takes a break. Although, she is later rescued by Supergirl, who defeats Bizarro and unties Thorn. Supergirl later reveals that she just happened to stumble into the garden. Thorn and Supergirl later ambush and capture Ivy and turn her into the police.

Team Nobody, IMO. Vigilante attacks supervillains, gets stomped, teams up with superhero to beat supervillains. Whatever.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't agree.

I'm fact, I think the idea that all of the massively varying depictions of comic book characters - even within the same universe or the same notional "continuity" - are supposed to be the same character is just self evidently ridiculous. I get it a little if you're specifically referring to mainline DC comics, but even there, I'm very skeptical - rewriting characters from year to year or creator to creator is part of the game. And if you're talking about DCEU stuff, it's just palpably absurd that Birds of Prey Harley has anything to do with Comics Harley's misdeeds.

In conclusion, abandon canonicity.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, like, the way superhero comics work is kind of antithetical to trying to consolidate character history into one solid developing narrative like it's a character arc on a TV show. You just have to think "well that was years ago and a load of different writers ago".

[(Anonymous)]

+100

It's a franchise that reboots everyone more often than many people get new cars.

[(Anonymous)]

SA: and dc runs multiple competing versions of the same characters with different moods and levels of violence at the same time.

[philstar22]

I think most characters can be redeemed. But redemption has to be done right, and the more villainous the character and the more awful their deeds, the more work the redemption takes. And from what I can tell DC isn't actually doing a good enough job in making a believable redemption story. And yes, even the movie-verse Harley does need a redemption story because she was a villain and did do awful things, even if she wasn't quite as bad as comic Harley.

[(Anonymous)]

Ok, you're just being a misogynist now. Plenty of villains get redemption, but of course you've gotta make a secret about the character that is obviously popular with the younger female fanbase. Fuck you.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh. If you accept that Harley is a single character and should be understood in terms of a narrative of redemption, then it makes sense to talk about how she hasn't earned her redemption, because that's how narratives of redemption work - redemption is justified by atonement. Saying that she hasn't earned her redemption is not the same as saying she's irredeemable.

Op Here

[(Anonymous)]

I chose Harley because she's the most popular example I could think of. It has nothing to do with the fanbase. Disliking one female character does not equal misogyny.

The others I was thinking of were mainly X-Men villains but I didn't think most people here would be familiar with the current comics.

[numb3r_5ev3n]

I formed a theory back in 2016 that people were starting to glom onto Harley as a protagonist once they started to realized that Batman's whole premise (a rich white guy who puts on a mask and uses high tech gadgets to go hunt and beat up poor and mentally ill people) was problematic. And some of the problematic things about Harley can be rationalized by the fact that she was essentially corrupted and manipulated by a charming sociopath, and now she got away from him and is trying to forge her own identity and destiny. I can see why people like her as a character without agreeing with a lot of what she does as a character.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, considering that when she was first introduced into the canon she was quickly established as a messed up, brainwashed, abused victim of the Joker... It would be more reasonable to argue that the comics which presented her as an unapologetic clear-headed thrill killer are actually the ones more to blame for poor characterisation.
The current trend leaning back to her original personality is just rinsing off all the grimdark bullshit of the late 90s & early 2000s.

[(Anonymous)]

Harley might not be the best example of this because she is written as a totally different character with a different history in each interpretation of her character. so comics Harley does not equal cartoon Harley does not equal live action Harley and one version cannot be punished for another version's crimes. (which isn't to say she's not a selfish asshole but i've seen plenty of other anti-hero types get away with being even bigger selfish assholes.)

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't put Harley in with other morally ambiguous anti-hero types, mainly because she has quite a clear direction as a character (across all media, despite other differences), she was brainwashed and in a horribly abusive "relationship" and she did some shit because of that, but she's now on a twisty-turny path to find herself away from the Joker and be better in her own way, and that's the appeal of the character, people find things to relate to in that. She's also funny and chaotic but capable of being put in more emotional/dramatic situations, too.

[(Anonymous)]

There's a lot of DC characters that I think work better as villains than as edgy heroes... I don't actually mind this take on Harley Quinn and can find it fun, but some other characters I'd much rather see stay villains. Not necessarily "wholly evil," just in an antagonistic role narratively, you know?

[(Anonymous)]

I know redemption arcs are unfashionable now, but I hope that pendulum moves again sooner rather than later, because I fucking LOVE them. The cheesier, the better.

(But some villains should stay villains because they're more fun that way.)

[(Anonymous)]

She is a very sympathetic character, but I hate what they've done with her.