beforethepunchline | Recent Entries

Life in Darrow lately has been weird as all get-out, but what else is new? Harley's just grateful to find that, whatever the heck has been going on, it's bypassed her entirely. That doesn't mean her friends have been safe, though. She's been making a point of checking in on them just to be sure they're all doing swell.

Besides, she just likes to do that now and then anyway. It's so easy to get too busy and let weeks go by without making real time to hang out. So when she spots Sweeney, impossible to miss, just up the block, she picks up the pace so she can latch onto him. "Hey," she says brightly, arm looping through his. "How's it going, duck?"

New clients are always a little nervewracking, Harley has found. Coming to Darrow has meant finding a balance between being the professional people are looking for and not compromising on who she is, and a lot of people don't really get her whole thing. It scares off more potential clients than not, but she figures the ones who stick around are the ones who need her anyway, and that's good enough.

She's seeing a new client today, so she gets the office all neat and tidy, stepping out into the tiny foyer at the sound of the bell on the door chiming.

"Hiya," she chirps. "Zoe, right?"

So Bombshells: United is coming to an end without any actual appearances by Harley Quinn. On one hand, this gives me absolute free rein with her backstory, which is great. On the other, it gives me absolute free rein with her backstory, which is horrible. I wanted it given to me in the comics, gdi. So I'm opening this up to you guys for help brainstorming the finer points of her story. Because, yeah, I could just play it without one, but I like to have one in my head even if it never comes up in-game. I'm just much more comfortable that way.

Here's what we know:

Harley is English but was sent away to attend charm school in America (we see her refer to the Depression and end up in Louisiana, which support the notion that her charm school was not in her home country).
There (WHILE STILL A TEENAGER, RED FLAG ALERT), she meets Mistah J, who sweeps her off her feet and into a life of crime.
The crime is fine by Harley, but Mistah J starts experimenting with something else, dark magic, that scares her off; he finds Batgirl, here a vampire, and "she did something to him so...he was never really my man again" (turned him? Is the Joker a vampire in Bombshells???). Harley leaves, telling Pam that she knew there were monsters in the world, but that she would never be one.
At some point she returns to England, gets her degrees, and becomes a licensed psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum in London.
We DO see her wearing the white greasepaint throughout her flashbacks with Mistah J, so we can assume that this is part of her bank-robbing costume somehow.
However, in her first appearance in the series, it seems to appear spontaneously when she snaps and changes from Harleen to Harley, as signified by the change in hair, makeup, and attitude.
Harley, while traditionally written without superpowers, definitely has them in Bombshells. She is able to turn anything into comedy, which allows her to break the fourth wall and bend the laws of nature. Birds will fly around her head if she's dizzy. She can produce a mallet from nowhere. If it's funny, she can do it.

Here's what I don't know:

Where does the white greasepaint come from? Is this an actual transformation? If so, what caused it?
Did Harley always have powers or did they come from the same place as the whole Harley Quinn Look?

Here are some more thoughts I have:

I think Harley can change back to Harleen at will, but there is definitely some kind of transformation happening here. I just don't know what caused it originally.
At this point in Darrow, she's still Harley because she wants to be. She may eventually change back and forth like a superhero and their alter ego, which I think is something sometimes seen in other Harley Quinn incarnations and which I'd like to play with eventually. But right now, she just wants to be Harley, and she seems, in canon, to be more comfortably herself that way, electing to stay as Harley even after they stop the Joker's Daughter from possessing Pamela.
Maybe something happened in the bayou while Mistah J was conjuring up potions and elixirs that caused this change in Harley? Because originally, when they're just robbing banks, it could easily just be a disguise, but it's no longer that by the time she's working at Arkham. (See 1 and 2.) Something equivalent to the traditional vat of acid, like she mistakenly takes one of the potions or is coerced to do so?

Ultimately, it'll come down to what I decide suits my interpretation best, but I could really use people to bounce ideas off of and outside input, because there may be some great possibilities I just haven't thought of or flaws in my logic that I haven't yet seen. I can't find any real sources regarding her background from the creators, probably because, I assume, Bennett would have revisited this backstory at some point if the series weren't being canceled, but if you know of any, I'd love to see them. Help please!

It's kind of a nutty idea, even for Harley Quinn.

She lives pretty frugally, but that doesn't mean she can wholly sustain herself on her Darrow income. And, anyway, it gets boring. Sometimes she fights crime for kicks, but it's not the same, really, not without her Pam-a-Lamb or a real cause to get behind. Mostly she just doesn't like people who hurt for fun.

So she needs something to do with her time.

It's pretty easy to get licensed again. They look at her funny, sure, but she fills out the paperwork, studies hard to get caught up with modern practices, and takes the exam. Easy-peasy.

But no one wants to hire a clown-faced psychiatrist, so Harley figures there's just one thing she can do: rent out her own office.

She's wandering the city when she sees it, a for rent sign in the window of a tiny office building, and she stops, delighted, to peer through the window. "Ooh, gotcha," she says. "All you need is a little fixin' up montage and we're in business. Dr. Harlee—Harley Quinn."

It feels like no time at all before she's hanging up her sign.

[ Feel free to come by at any point — when she's found the office or after she gets it set up, etc. Open until this says otherwise. This will be linked for January. ]

It's been a long few weeks. The last while has taken her from Harleen Quinzel to Harley Quinn, from London to Leningrad, from psychiatry to fighting Nazis and monster armies. (Seriously, is she crazy or did everyone in this arc have a monster army? What is that about?) It's brought her from being alone to love. Heck, she even had a vacation under the sea.

All in all, it's been a pretty good time.

Okay, so there were the giant monster octopus things and that General Faora lady and Killer Frost, and she'd been real worried about Raven for a minute there. But they've turned it all around. Leningrad hasn't just survived the siege; it's blossoming in the depths of winter, entirely literally. That's all Pam-a-Lamb. While everyone recuperates from the last fight, she's covered Leningrad in fruits and flowers.

The air is sweet with it, redolent with rose and daisy and violet. It does nothing to help Harley stay awake where they lay, curled together on the grass, vines and flowers around them. The stingray Mera lent them, now small, floats down to rest on her hand, and Harley closes her eyes. They've had their share of war. There's no escaping the fact that, soon enough, they'll get right back into the fray. For now, though, they've earned their rest.

The air is different around her when she wakes up, warm, with a hint of aged upholstery. She sits up slowly, fingers curling tight into the seat as she looks around, heart skipping a beat.

She's on a train, that much is clear. How she got here, though, she doesn't know, and she isn't too keen on that. Appearing in places she shouldn't be with no sign of Pamela in sight, that isn't all that funny, and she's not sure, for a moment, how to make it be. She looks out the window for help, but there's just countryside rolling past, the ocean visible in the distance, a city coming into view that she doesn't recognize.

And then there's the fact no one else is on board. Oh, she can see and hear people in other cars, glimpse them through the windows in the doors, but there's not a soul in this car with her. So when the train pulls into the station and comes to a stop, it's a surprise to Harley that the door opens. She steps off the train with a handful of other passengers, and no one seems to give her so much as a second glance, which is kind of weird in itself.

She approaches the information booth, but the girl there just glances up for a moment before handing her a heavy manila envelope. "This is yours," she says, incredibly bored by it all, and then closes the window before Harley can ask any questions.

She's not sure what to make of it, that she's suddenly been handed this or that the girl seemed to recognize her as the intended recipient of the package. She's not sure what to do with the contents of the envelope either, which she starts to examine as she leaves the station. There's cash, which is great, even if it's an unfamiliar currency, but the ID is kind of creepy, and then there's a strange object of metal and glass that has Harley hesitating. She doesn't know what it is, but it looks pretty futuristic, and the cars and clothes around her ain't like anything she knows from home.

"Oh, no," she says, "time travel." She taps on the booth's glass front. "Hey, I didn't sign up for this."

It's a pretty weird city, yeah, but Harley's seen stranger things by far. Just recently, she took a little break under the sea, so this Darrow place can't hold much of a candle to that. It was a nice vacation, too, her and Pam-a-Lamb underwater and under the covers.

That's the part about Darrow she doesn't like. She hasn't seen vine nor tendril of Pam since she arrived, and it's kinda got her worried. They haven't been much separated since they met. She was pretty set on that being the new status quo, and then she wound up here, where what she wants doesn't seem to enter into it. Pam would've come if she could have, though, so it's not like she doesn't want to be with Harley, Harley's pretty sure. She hopes, at least. It's just strange to be without her, is all.

She's a tough broad, though. Harley's not too worried about her staying safe. It's the Nazis that oughta be worried.

That's something about Darrow she does like: no Nazis, far as she can tell. It's a nice change.

She misses the circus, though. Pam and the circus and Raven and all the people they kinda took under their wings (branches?) there for a while, and the animals. That's what brings her to the zoo, you see. It doesn't do to be a clown who's blue, but even she's having a little trouble finding the humor in all this. Animals always cheer her up, though. Zoos are sort of dangerous, because some of them aren't too nice to their animals, and that gets Harley real worked up, but at the nice ones, it's a chance to be close to animals she doesn't otherwise get to see. This one seems okay so far, so she's taken up space at the hyena cage, leaning close to look through the bars at them. "Hiya, babies," she coos. "What a bunch of cuties. This would be a lot nicer if I could snuggle ya."