krazykidd said:
Geo Da Sponge said:
Jesus... There are plenty of situations that make me feel annoyed or angry when it comes to how things are portrayed or treated in various forms of media. But it's fairly rare that something makes me feel physically sick.
I mean Jesus fucking Christ, this goes beyond "it gives the wrong impression" or "it's a problematic trope that reinforces stereotpyes" or anything like that. This is just fucking psychotic. I'm of the belief that while anything can potentially be funny, even siubjects like suicide, anyone who wants to make jokes about that kind of thing needs to be prepared for the fact that it's going to be an uphill struggle. And if the joke then falls flat and insults people, the person making the joke has no one to blame but themselves for bringing it up in the first place. But in this situation there is no joke. It's just suicide. Naked suicide. But that's okay because it's Harley Quinn, so therefore it's funny. And come to think of it she's not even going to be in costume, so that makes it even less cartoony and more... Yuch. I really don't want to think about this any more.
So how much do you actually know about harley quinn? This actually seems quite in character , and she didn't always have the costume , she was a normal person beforehand.
Gee, I did not realise that. I thought that she had the costume ever since she was born. I thought she had plopped out of the womb in a dinky little baby version of her costume and then it had grown with her ever since.
Anyway, I can't claim to be an expert about Harley Quinn, but I know her backstory as Harleen Quinzel PHD, getting seduced by the Joker while trying to give him therapy, ending up in an abusive relationship with him, the on-off thing with Poison Ivy... And suicidal tendencies don't really seem all that in character for her. I'm not certain on that she's never done it before and I can't google it since all the links I got are on the subject we're currently discussing, but she seems far too optimistic for that. Again, if I'm wrong here and she has a history of it then I will admit that it's in character but it's not something I've seen before.
Because if not, what is the reasoning for her doing this, how is it in character? And for the sake of
my sanity please don't say "Because she's insane", because that just smacks of lazy writing. Having said that, maybe there is a very good reason for her actions. I'm not going to dismiss that possibility, I just wish that "there is potentially a good explanation, but we haven't given it" would stop being used as an excuse equal to "there is a good explanation, and this is it."
Anyway. Whether or not it's in character makes no difference to how creepy the instruction of "Draw a woman committing suicide in a realistic (albeit over the top) manner, and make sure she's naked" is. Some people have said that she's in a bath, therefore it's obvious she'd be naked. I'd respond to that by saying that it would also be obvious that the bath would be full of water, but they didn't specify that. It's entirely possible that someone attempting to kill themselves in that manner could be clothed; after all, what reason do they have not to be? Their clothes will get wet? Well that's just
terrible. But out of all the things that you might take for granted one way or another, they specifically say that she has to be naked.
EDIT: Just remembered to say that I completely forgot about the New 52 changes while I was writing this post, so maybe they do make it completely in character (they certainly change how much of a difference there is between naked and in costume). But that's sidetracking, really.
