Jarley

Jarley is the het ship between The Joker and Harley Quinn from the DC Comics, DC Animated Universe and DC Extended Universe fandom.

Comics
The Joker and Harley Quinn first meet when he’s a patient and she’s a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum. She’s assigned to him personally and over various sessions she truly believes that she’s “curing” him, however she’s actually falling in love with him. She breaks him out of the Asylum and becomes his sidekick and girlfriend. They have a very complicated on/off relationship. He tends to be physically abusive or emotionally cold, but there are rare occasions where he’s genuine towards her and shows in his own twisted way that he cares about her.

Suicide Squad
In Suicide Squad, they‘re in an relationship. He seems to be truly in love with her, but he doesn’t show it in front of his henchmen except for his main security guard. He tries and almost successfully gets her back from prison. He does eventually break her out.

Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn
Sometime after Suicide Squad, The Joker and Harley Quinn break up and she says it’s forever this time. To announce it she drunkly goes to the Ace Chemical plant, where she pledged herself to him and blows it up.

Batman: The Telltale Series
In Batman: The Enemy Within the roles between Joker (who goes by "John Doe") and Harley Quinn are reversed, with Harley as the big boss lady that John wants to please, and has shown signs of him having a crush on her. When he joins the criminal group that Harley serves as one of its main bosses, she can see that John is still having trouble finding himself, and even though he was able to become a member who has a voice in the Pact she treats him like a low level lacky. Before John introduces Bruce to her, he asks Wayne to make him look good in front of to her. In John's room at the hideout, there is a framed photo of him with Harley Quinn. As he talks with Bruce he mentions how he and Harley talking about how Bruce acted at Wayne Tech allowed him to have a conversation with Harley without him getting her to lose interest in it.

Fanon
Jarley is one of the most popular ships in the fandom (and not only in the fandom) and one of the most shipped. People love the dynamic of their relationship, because of it being ambiguous, extensive and interesting. The fact that the two are villains only makes the fandom ship them more. Jarley shippers often get into fights with Harlivy shippers - usually the main thread is Joker being abusive to Harley in most of the universes. Some of the Jarley shippers also base their DC knowledge mainly on movies and Batman TAS and don't know that Harley and Ivy got together in the comics, which often only goads the quarrels.

Despite most of the Jarley and Harlivy shippers, not agreeing with each other, there are also some people who enjoy both pairings or prefer one of these more, yet still respect/like the other one.

The Harley Quinn (2019) cartoon also was one of the causes in some of the Harlivy shippers change in their opinion about Jarley, because of Joker actually wanting to help in Harley and Ivy's relationship in the last episodes of the 2nd season and trying to convince her to fight for Ivy's love.

However, Harlivy is not the only main rival ship to Jarley as lately Joker got a new girlfriend - Punchline - which was warmly received by many DC fans and quite a lot of people like the Joker x Punchline pairing already, despite their relationship not being shown a lot yet.

Fandom
FAN FICTION

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