#( not that harley was.. like.. justified in anything that happened. i'm just saying.)

[rondo-of-blog]

Cool Comics I Read - 11/28/2022 Edition

Today on DC Universe Infinite I read DC Comics Presents #41, Catwoman (Vol. 2) #54, and Harley Quinn (Vol. 1) #11!

DC Comics Presents #41 (written by Martin Pasko) is part of an old comic series that's essentially just "Superman teams up with XYZ!" (and other letters of the alphabet, but I'd be here all day listing them all), and in this issue he teams up with... The Joker?!

The cover is absolutely irresistible, with Joker gleefully plummeting to his doom as Superman is faced with the dilemma of saving The Joker or saving Perry White (Superman's Friend Jimmy Olsen's Boss). I skimmed through some of it, but highlights include how very very Queer Joker is in all of it. :)

Catwoman (Vol. 2) #54 is what I believe to be the first issue in that volume that was written by one Devin Grayson. I haven't read a whole lot of her work, buuut I've heard nothing but good things about her from my beloved Cluster. If this issue is anything to go by, that reputation of hers is well-earned!

It's got this adorable story of Selina stealing a gem and then becoming very bored of it, only to quickly turn her ire from the gem to the ungrateful museum that didn't do enough to protect it! So, she puts it back... and steals it again... then puts it back... steals it again... and so on, leading to massive ramping up of the security and (as we later learn) the insurance policy for it.

Nothing really happens in the comic besides Selina bamboozling greedy museum dudes, but Devin makes it such a delight. I'm definitely considering reading further issues she wrote for this volume of Catwoman! (By the way, if you like Catwoman, I recommend the current run that Tini Howard's doing!)

Speaking of series I'm considering reading more of... that brings us to Harley Quinn (Vol. 1) #11, written by Karl Kesel! I cannot say enough good about this issue, every page I read of it was almost constant bliss. I'm not familiar with the name Karl Kesel, but for some reason I wasn't expecting much based on it! Oh how wrong I was!

What drew me to it was the hijinks-laden cover, featuring Harley Quinn on a motorbike with Robin (Tim Drake) and Batgirl (Cassandra Wayne), riding off a rooftop with Nightwing just barely holding on! What followed truly did not disappoint.

Despite a kind of trite beginning featuring a retread of the scene from The Killing Joke where Barbara is shot by The Joker, the comic basically immediately recovers with some of the most charming banter I've ever read between Babs and Dick. Dick in particular is in monumentally good form, I was reeling from the charm he had on the entire time.

Harley is an absolute chaos gremlin the entire issue, and it suits her! Speaking of things that suit her, that brings us to Barbara's old Batgirl costume! Harley's wearing it, this issue! "No one else was," she memorably states in the comic.

Tim and Cassie are also here, with Tim being pretty cute and Cassie being a darling I loved to see on every page she graced with her presence. There's this really fun visual note where Cassie's making a heart with her hands while watching Dick & Babs argue.

I'm very curious to read more - especially considering this comic predates the Arkham series and the New 52 so Harley's in her original get-up! I never get tired of seeing it, and hey! If this issue's anything to go off of, apparently I've been missing on a lot of fun Harley comics! I'm definitely considering reading more of it, but that'll have to wait another day.

It's 11:38 PM (CST) as I write this, and I'm all comic'd out for the day. Finding these hidden gems on DC Universe Infinite was a treat, and really served to justify my membership yet again. Looking forward to when I get back to y'all, whenever I feel like sharing about what I've read!

[0thsense]

9/30/2023

When I'm feeling down, I am vigilant to find fault in others, because it makes me feel like I have something over them. A stupid act of desperation.

The time limit is approaching. I am not doing well. What does it mean to give up? I want to run myself to death.

Could I survive losing all of my family and friends? Should I prepare myself for it? It'll slowly happen at this pace. Was I wrong about things all those years ago? Maybe I should quicken the pace.

I can't open up to anyone. Noone will understand, and everyone will think they understand. Hell, some people probably think they understand already without me saying anything. Maybe the easiest way to be happy is to presume you understand about unhappiness you've never felt.

I wanted to understand my emotions. It might be too late, because now all I ever feel is anger and frustration. Base, useless, devastating emotions.

Some girl I used to know followed me on Strava the other day. Simply because she connected her account and auto followed all of her contacts. And I held onto that for the whole day. Pathetic.

Do I feel good when I beat myself up like this? Honestly it's a little cathartic but I'm not sure if it's healthy. I spend so much time thinking about the past, it fills every undistracted moment of my life. Will it ever stop?

So dramatic for someone who has lived such an objectively easy life. I don't really believe that, more just unsure. But everyone else would surely mock me for thinking I have such insane struggles in my circumstances. So I can't open up. They'll think I'm even more pathetic than they already do. A good way to get some one time pity and then having them slowly drift off. A bad way to quicken the pace.

Maybe I just need to get better at slapping on a smile and enthusiasm, so that it doesn't take so much effort every time. Just get good at it so it doesn't take all my energy, so I don't dread it every time. Just... become an automatic liar. Perfect.

I'm not looking forward to going to Japan soon. I'm worried my shell will break over those 2 weeks. Maybe I'm even more worried that it won't. Maybe I will just be boring because I'm getting tired having to put on enthusiasm all the time. Perfect.

My legs hurt from running today. Good. I wonder if how I feel right now is accurate. If I look back on this post it will probably read pretty terribly. Have I made no progress? Perfect timing to be depressed again for the holiday season. Last time I showed up one time and they thought I was fine. Because I guess I'm good at faking enthusiasm. Fuck you.

If I think rationally about it, it's my fault. It's hard to tell when someone's depressed, and it's even harder when I've been putting on masks for my whole life. But I can't tell them either. Probably the worst cases of depression are the ones where they have noone to tell. Because they can't trust anybody to care enough. I'm doing fine everyone.

God and I hate it even more because I become so self absorbed. Making me lose one of the few things I prided myself on: empathy and thinking of others. And I kept that pride even though it became unjustified. It hurts.

Maybe I can try to think of others in this post. Harley decided she wants to move back home, because of RTO. I wonder how she feels about that. I wonder if I chose that just because it's semi relevant to me. My dad might also be kinda depressed, I'm kinda worried. Probably partly due to me.

God, I can't think of much when I try to remember caring about others recently. You don't just feel worse, you become worse. Please let me care for others again. I am an asshole. I'm not willing to sacrifice myself to help others. I find something in them to condemn and justify this. Nobody helped Jerry, and everyone sure loves beating down on him.

Endroll was a nice game.

[crimeloyalty-arch]

𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐇𝐀𝐌 𝐀𝐒𝐘𝐋𝐔𝐌⸻ some ~thoughts~ about harley and arkham,  mostly inspired by harleen but also a bit by the mad love novel.

arkham is a place that’s given up on its patients ⸻ sometimes because of a lack of resources (or the misappropriation of them),  sometimes because its leadership is simply unempathetic to its residents,  sometimes because its doctors are burnt out from their lack of successes.  

people don’t get out of arkham,  not by getting better,  at least.  there’s been so few patients who have improved over the last decade that by the time harleen joins the staff,  most of the doctors have lost hope completely.  what’s the point in trying when nothing seems to get through to your patients?  harleen resents this attitude,  unable to see the point in practicing medicine if one has no faith in the work they’re doing.  her fellow doctors attribute her optimism to her lack of experience,  expecting that she will give up as they have after a few months at the institution.  

most of arkham’s funding goes towards security measures,  rather than towards advancements in treatment.  most of its funding is private ⸻ and a significant portion of it is from those in gotham who do not wish to see arkham’s patients released,  regardless of whether or not they’re improving. harleen resents this too,  though there is little she can do about it without losing her own job.  she vows to help arkham’s patients,  rather than to give up on them. 

harleen’s primary purpose at arkham is to find subjects for her research;  she’s trying to demonstrate a link between long-term exposure to traumatic or violent events and the erosion of one’s capacity for empathy.   

she’s on staff neither to provide therapy nor to handle patient medications.  the irony of this is not lost on her,  as she feels she cares far more about arkham’s patients than most of the other doctors on staff.  their apathy infuriates her.  

her research is funded by a grant from the wayne foundation,  and bruce wayne swayed joan leland into allowing harleen access to arkham.  she also intends to do comparative research at blackgate prison,  but does not get the opportunity to do so before harvey dent’s attack,  as blackgate is more reluctant than arkham is to allow her access. 

since harleen is both fresh out of college and not a true employee of arkham,  nobody takes her all that seriously.  nobody believes in the work she’s doing. she’s very isolated from the rest of the staff as a result ⸻ and even when she does interact with them,  they make it very clear that they find her ambition a function of her youth.  harleen is written off over and over and over again,  simply because she is a young woman who wants to change the world.  no one bothers critiquing the scientific validity of her ideas - it is all personal.  this plays a huge part in joker being able to manipulate harleen,  because she is so fucking determined to prove everybody wrong about whether or not she can make a difference that she loses her ability to tell whether or not their critiques are based in reality. 

harleen’s goal at arkham is neither to write a best-selling book nor to become a tv psychiatrist,  like some older comics have suggested (🙄).  she is there because she wants to help gotham.  she believes that if she can figure out how trauma and empathy are connected,  she can help gotham’s criminals,  allowing them to break the cycle they have been trapped in.  she wants to change the world,  not get rich and famous.   

the decision to allow harleen full access to the joker is a mistake.  while harleen bears responsibility for allowing the doctor/patient relationship to erode so significantly,  arkham failed its patients,  failed its staff,  and failed gotham by its inadequate internal controls. 

despite arkham leadership having been fully aware of the joker’s manipulative capability ( and having witnessed his interactions with his prior doctors ),  they allow harleen to interact with the joker alone.  part of this is due to her insistence,  but at no point do they intervene. they do not even intervene when harleen unplugs the cameras for her sessions,  which is such a massive fucking red flag that i truly do not know how nobody was like,  something is going on and we need to stop it. it’s not exactly news that arkham is incompetent,  but the fact that harleen was literally able to sleep with the joker while he was being held in arkham is beyond professional incompetence.  somebody should have noticed,  and somebody should have intervened well before things got to that point,  especially when j is known for his escapes and for manipulating his doctors. 

harleen has always struggled with the concept of professional boundaries,  since she believes connecting with her patients is important in breaking through to them,  though i do not think this would have ever been anything more than a theoretical issue with anybody other than the joker.  she would have upheld her professional responsibilities with any other patient ( which is demonstrated by her professionalism with ivy,  though we all know how that relationship develops once they are both out of arkham. )  harleen would have been an excellent doctor had she never come into contact with the joker,  who played on every single one of her sympathies,  hopes,  and triggers in order to get her completely under his control.

once harley escapes joker,  she works with bruce wayne to ensure that nothing like what happened to her will ever happen again.  cameras stay plugged in.  patients don’t get unlimited access to their doctors.  guards perform routine checks.  she’s determined to leave no more cracks in the system for people like j to wiggle through.

it’s incredibly difficult for harley to sort out responsibility for what happened in arkham.  part of the events that unfolded are entirely on her head.  sleeping with your patient is just about the worst thing you can do as a psychiatrist.  she had so many opportunities to look herself in the mirror and stop.  that doesn’t mean that arkham wasn’t also in the wrong,  as they should have noticed what was going on and stepped in on their patients’ behalf.  no doctor should have access like that,  especially with such a vulnerable population.  additionally,  harley knows that the events up until harvey dent’s attack played out exactly as joker wanted ⸻ he went so far as to steal the file on her research in order to make himself the perfect patient.  she played right into his hand and she had no idea.  it’s insanely messy,  like so much of her life,  and she has a very hard time finding the balance between holding herself accountable and forgiving herself as a result.  none of this would have happened with anyone other than j,  but harley still will doubt herself and her decision making for the rest of her life because of the way these events played out.  i think this is why she is so fucking unlikely to ever go back into psychiatry and why she would retrain in another specialty, such as surgery. 

[naferty]

I can totally see Harley and Peter being Steve and Bucky 2.0. Maybe omegas physically mature earlier than Alphas [like girls generally do sooner than boys] so Peter gets a growth spurt and is suddenly the biggest and strongest of the three for however long it lasts. This makes Harley a tad insecure and extra fighty and Peter keeps having to break up playground scuffles. "If you get suspended again I'm not sneaking you dessert this time." "How could you! My own brother!"

Hands down Harley and Peter are the SteveBucky 2.0 of the 21st century. No one knows how the 40s duo behaved when they were younger but just watching Steve and Bucky now gives them an idea. They are always amazed - especially Tony - when they can see the resemblance each time Peter or Harley do something that creates the spitting images of their dads.

As the baby trio grow Tony sees more notable quirks and habits the kids inherited from their dads. He especially loves moments where he can see both trios doing the exact same thing at the same time and can see a past and a future side by side.

His favorite place for these instances to happen is in the space that acts as the middle ground for living room and kitchen. It gives him the perfect view of anyone and anything in the living room and the kitchen. For this time, he sees Steve and Bucky standing in the middle of the living room while Harley and Peter are standing in the middle of the kitchen. Steve and Harley to the left and Bucky and Peter to the right. The two duos are facing each other, two steps away, and arguing. Steve has his arms crossed over his chest and is purposely turning away. Harley is in the kitchen doing the exact same pose, tiny arms compared to his father crossed over his chest and sticking up his chin as he faces away from Peter.

Bucky is working himself to a frenzy. Arms waving in agitation and face morphing into different expressions over his irritation, anger, frustration and worry. Peter is not faring any better, working himself up and face turning pink to the point of Tony worrying over him getting a small asthma attack. Thankfully, Harley notices this too and finally responds to Peter’s scolding, trying to justify whatever he has done to upset Peter and failing horribly because it only makes Peter’s face grow even pinker. Steve follows every movement Harley has done, explaining his reasoning and making Bucky’s face bloat in anger, murder face slowly forming.

Tony turns to the kitchen in time to see Peter do the exact same murder face as his alpha father. Because he’s more Tony than Bucky, the murder face he creates doesn’t have the same effect Bucky is able to cause, but damn is it impressive. No one can pull off Bucky’s murder face, but Peter comes as a very close second.

Tony whips his head back and forth as both Bucky and Peter keep their murder faces on for 10 seconds before inhaling deeply and relaxing as best they could once they exhale.

“Fine,” Tony can hear Bucky say with a voice so rough and deep. It leaves no room to argue, “those butter cookies I just finished up? My ma’s recipe? You ain’t getting a crumb. Not today, not next week, not for the rest of the year.”

“Fine,” Tony turns to the kitchen and hears Peter’s voice do the same thing, “you know dad’s butter cookies? Fresh out of the oven? Yeah, you’re not getting a crumb from me. I know you got suspended again. You got nowhere to go.”

The heartbreaking face Steve and Harley create almost makes Tony cry. Their eyes are wide and shining in betrayal. Despair etched in their faces.

“Bucky!” Steve wails.

“Peter!” Harley wails just as loud.

Bucky huffs and turns his back in a show before he walks away and never looks back. Peter does the exact same thing before he walks out of the kitchen.

“My own brother!” Harley and Steve say in outrage as if they’re in some Shakespearean play.

All the while T’Challa has been resting on the sofa and reading a book the entire time Steve and Bucky have been arguing in front of him, not bothered one bit by their drama. Riri is on the dining table in the kitchen, reading from her pad and looking very bored as her brothers argue in front of her. Both flick their eyes at their respected blond for just a second, scoff at their dramatic antics and get back to reading.

Together, Steve turns to T’Challa in hope and Harley to Riri.

“T’Challa?”

“Riri?”

The pair doesn’t even look away from their reading.

“Not in this century.”

“Not in your life.”

Tony covers his smile, trying not to laugh. Bless him, he loves these six with all his heart.

[phantomchick]

I'm so bitter with the last rhato issue. Bruce, why? Pains me he talking like that, so delicate........ was there really reason to remind him of the ban like that? Poor Jason, he deserves so much more :(

Agreed on all counts. The insensitivity coming from Bruce in this issue is overpowering, this is NOT the batman I love. This depiction is literally that of an abusive neglectful overly-entitled asshole who has always put the onus on the trauma survivor to meet HIS demands and meet HIM halfway while hardly ever even making a show of doing anything close to the same. (Letting someone live in a city where you don’t hold any actual legal jurisdiction if they fulfil certain criteria is not the same thing as emotional support)I am not a Jason fan who wants him to keep killing or anything like that, but it’s disgusting how conditional Bruce’s parental love is. It’s upsetting on so many levels and I really can’t believe DC isn’t pulling the brakes on what’s been going down in his every one on one interaction with Jason as of late. No real hero acts like that, no parent should act like that. It’s been shown that his go to reaction when he’s angry at Jason is to beat the shit out of him regardless of the fact that he hardly fights back at all when Bruce is the one hitting him. This goes way back to the UTH comic storyline in which Batman handles a hostage situation by throwing a batarang into his own child’s throat and then not searching for him in the aftermath, prioritising the Joker and Dick. I am not saying Jason’s behaviour is good but Bruce’s reaction to it never fails to make things worse. And also - ALSO! Why is Bruce seeing his parents getting murdered in a mugging as a child and reacting by dedicating his life to superheroing and dressing up as a bat treated as valid by the narrative and the fandom when a fifteen year old getting tortured/beaten to death, (waking up in a coffin and digging himself out of his own grave, dealing with catatonia for at least a year  and unwillingly getting dunked into a lazarus pit which is known to induce psychosis, anger management issues and violent tendencies, meanwhile losing his only stable family unit and seemingly having his place in said family filled by an outsider) and reacting by trying to kill supervillains not?Like the difference in the treatment of their traumas is insane and that’s not even going into the fact that Katana kills, Wonder Woman kills, the Green Lanterns kill, Aquaman kills, Jonah Hex kills, SWAMP THING kills, and none of them are ostracised by other members of the superhero community for it. Jason is though, even by non bat-affiliated heroes, it’s been shown that he’s mostly tolerated but never liked, with the rare exceptions of Roy and Starfire, he’s looked down on and if you ask me that’s solely because of his status as a bat, he’s the only one in the bat umbrella who’s known for attempting to kill supervillains, Batman’s no kill code extends to a lot of the dcu as killing is seen as a dividing line a lot of the time. But the fact that Jason’s character has consistently been shown to suffer MORE than any other hero without a no kill code stands out, and not just in the looked down on outcast respect either.

I have so many problems with DC’s treatment of this character from rampant classism to warped goggles that make them think anything batman does to Jason is justified because he’s a killer, despite his rapport and gentleness with homicidal maniacs like Harvey Dent and Harley Quinn.Jason probably has arrested development let’s be honest (it’s warranted considering the bucket loads of ptsd and lack of stable growth environment) even if he wasn’t underage which he is, dick is confirmed 21 now and Jason’s younger than him sooo, Bruce regularly beats on his son who’s still a minorBut oh shit he just disowned and banished him and still thinks he has a right to hug him and act like he’s the bigger person? And neglect and abandonment are still abuse.And I’m supposed to root for this Batman?

And let’s not forget he STILL hasn’t asked or investigated into just WHY Jason finally broke the deal after months of keeping to his rules just fine, he still doesn’t know why Jason tried to kill the penguin. He just started beating on him and didn’t wait for an explanation, what if it was mind control? what if he was framed? Not like it hasn’t happened before, I mean it wasn’t, on this occasion it was due to grief and toxic emotional manipulation but if it had been any one else, be they villain or civilian or any one of his other kids, you can bet bruce wouldn’t have just started whaling on them and broken THEIR arm. His break up with Selina is no excuse.