I’m kinda sick of people only focusing on the first phase of Joker and Harley Quinn’s relationship. No, I’m really sick of it.

I’m not going to disagree with you or tell you you’re wrong for thinking any sane woman should get out of that sort of situation. But there are some things you need to understand and come to terms with.
Harley is not exactly sane. Harley chose to come back, and stay with him and because of her choice, her relationship with The Joker changed and evolved into something many people just don’t want to acknowledge.

She discovered he could be manipulated, too. She discovered she could throw punches and kicks too. She found a way to prove herself as a villain and stand up for herself as a woman. (and please don’t get me started on dom/sub lifestyle dynamics and how they do not demean the women who enjoy them) She found a best friend with serious benefits to call upon when he got a little too unstable or kicked her out.

She found a way to feel safe and loved and defend herself and her heart in this crazy mixed up world we like to call the Rogues Gallery and Gotham City. A place and group where absolutely nothing is the way it should be, and safety and sanity are a joke. Despite the danger and misfortunes of Gotham City Harley found a place where she felt at home and her heart swelled. She found a place and people who made her feel like herself, like a bonafide happy human being. She forced her immediate surroundings and relationships to change to benefit her, and when they refused to change she left until they were different. All of this while being in love and in a relationship with the Joker.

But all you want to focus on is how the poor defenseless thing got “taken advantage of” and had her life “stolen away” from her by some big bad scary man. She took the city’s most dangerous and unpredictable villain and turned him into her partner. Not in crime but in the relationship. She made him care about her and think about her and even figured out how to get him to do her bidding. She got him to obsess over her (albeit mostly internally or to himself) the same way she did him.

Taking all of that away from her as a character and replacing it with a “Well, I got away from that monster but I still kinda think about him but fuck him!” makes me furious. It doesn’t give you any of that character development on Joker or Harley’s side. It takes away depth and meaning and reduces it to a looney woman who has absolutely no reason to care or be attached to her abusive one-time-sorta-ex who never did anything for her but obsesses over and thinks about him constantly anyway. And I feel like that’s a worse message at the end of the day.