[FILLER VIDEO] Is Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy A Bad Combo?

I miss going to ConnectiCon.

I have to admit the idea of Harleen Quinzel and Pamela Isley being more than friends was something I even believed…until they actually put the pair together. The fanshipping community doesn’t believe in platonic friendships. Every pairing is a potential couple to these would-be nymphomaniacs, and I’m not going to be shy about saying. This is a community where the fanatics seem to outweigh the actual couple seekers. Just ask Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver…and Driver’s WIFE! Thankfully not every shipping community is that fanatic that they try to force the actual actors to get together and torture a spouse for “being in the way”. It’s rare I say something like this, but that’s the incel group that needs to get laid!

Sound logic has since prevailed. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy were not intended to be a romantic pairing but closer to Thelma and Louise than Bonny and Clyde. I guess they made such an interesting pairing that even before fanshipping became what it is today, there was talk…probably from people who wanted to see hot girls kiss. Personally I’d rather hot girls kiss me than each other. So if any are available…..

JesterBell on YouTube was a fan of Harley Quinn until the extreme feminists made her a “strong independent woman who don’t need no Joker”, thus misunderstanding the whole theme of the character, then the queer activists and horny fanshippers made it worse. Extremists really do ruin everything. Jess has done numerous videos on how DC Comics has ruined this Fox Kids original, originally created as a one-shot tribute to Paul Dini’s friend Arleen Sorkin. This one, however, is longer than most as she goes over everything wrong with pairing Harley and Ivy as a romantic couple…not helping that the people responsible think sex is romance. As I need time to get certain things done this week I present this video. Have a seat and enjoy. You might learn something.

Like I said in the intro, Harley & Ivy were meant to be closer to the characters in Thelma & Louise, two women who become criminals. (Though from a quick Google summary it might have been understandable. I haven’t seen the movie and don’t plan to. It’s not my kind of movie.) Who else were they going to pair either character up with. Ivy isn’t necessarily not into men…she hates humans for damaging her beloved plant life. I’m actually surprised she’d be friends with Harley except they both like to hurt people. It’s not even all humans. There was a kid in the DCAU tie-in comics who was so filled with poisons that he literally sweated it and made people sick. Holding Ivy’s had allowed her to cure him based on her own weird biology. She tried to kill pre-Two Face Harvey because where he wanted to build his ideal prison was where a rare flower bloomed and they killed all the flowers to build it. Who was she going to hang out with, Catwoman? Baby Doll? Wait for Roxy Rocket to be created? Harley was also she had and it turned out the two characters played against each other well.

Pamela was the scientist, the level headed but cold hearted one. Harley was her opposite, but only ways that could explore the two perspectives without them clashing too much. Villains the DCAU version of Gotham City had a weird sort of friendship. They even got together for card games.

If you think out of continuity art is proof of characters’ lifestyles just because it was done by the creator…I know a few pictures of Superman and Lois by Joe Shuster you really want to avoid. Also, Timm has said he doesn’t even like Harley Quinn when turning her into an overweight lesbian in something barely resembling a clown outfit in the adult-targeted Batman: Caped Crusader. You know, where Penguin had a sex swap and the other women were all lesbians. I don’t care what he thinks.

Honestly the only “evidence” they might slip a lesbian romance is when they snuck Maggie Sawyer’s comic book girlfriend at the time into the final episode of Superman: The Animated Series, visiting her in the hospital. You’d only know that’s who she was if you knew the comics or saw the interview. Otherwise you’d write her off as a platonic friend or her sister. You know, if the fanshippers believed in platonic friendships of any sexual orientation of thought incest was off the table. Also, here’s that scene from The Batgirl Adventures JesterBell mentions.

Make your own decision.

This isn’t even the only time DC Comics pulled this. Renee Montoya in the DCAU was snarky but good-natured, whose backstory as a police officer came from her husband, a fellow cop who was killed in the line of duty, or so was planned in the story bible. I keep thinking there was an episode or tie-in comic where this is used, and I remember it from long before I read her story bible bio, Yes, this is when I was buying into the Harley/Ivy ship because others made it feel obvious. Like I said, once they actually became a couple I became a bit more cynical. Montoya, on the other hand, didn’t just go gay in the comics, she became the “angry lesbian”, losing all the elements of her character not tied to sexual orientation that made her one of my favorite characters. She also comes from the show and was ruined by the comics who wanted more gay representation, and thought making her an unlikeable pain in the rear was good representation. She was one of my favorite characters and I hate what they did to her.

Frankly I’m not surprised the usual suspects got mad that Harley and Ivy didn’t just walk into a room and become a couple, or that there was any path to getting them together that had a roadblock. My mom didn’t watch All My Children, one of the few soaps she didn’t watch, but she did get one of those soap opera magazines. With nothing else to read while having a seat in the bathroom, where the mag was left, I ended up reading about a character that they made gay and certain groups were upset that they ended her gay relationship with a character who had to be talked into being her lover instead of her straight friend. They were mad that the gay couple had romance issues…IN A SOAP OPERA! Any romance not having issues is a rarity. Even I know that. They broke up the most well know couple in soaps, Luke and Laura of General Hospital (conversely my mom’s favorite soap and one of the few standing today). You think some retconned romance was going to last? Good luck, kids.

So they weren’t ruined for being gay. They were ruined because the shippers and activists don’t want them to be anything other than the It Couple of the DC universe. Harley looking for love and acceptance, something the Joker plays off of in her origin, is part of her character. Even Batwheels, the preschool show, understood this, though it portrays it through Harley always stealing trophies and medals so she can see herself as special and important. Again, the show for kindergarteners at best about Batman’s talking vehicles understood Harley better than the comics and her own show writers. Ivy just wants to cause chaos, one of the other things Harley likes, and is an eco-terrorist. There isn’t even anything there to form a romance on. No shared trauma, no shared relationship goals (Ivy never even had any until she went gay for Harley), just spreading chaos and having someone to talk to. That’s Harley & Ivy. I guess toxic relationships are better if one of them isn’t a man.