Happy Family!

I take back what I said I can actually see how Talia and Battinson get together because that pathetic wet cat of a man is most definitely into people with more forceful personalities than him. He's a melodramatic mf and Talia is nothing if not a romantic so she has no issue keeping up with him. They angst about stuff together and then have dramatic fights across rooftops or gardens or something while proclaiming their "forbidden love" and calling each other nicknames that make everyone else gag. They write long, lengthy poems about each other's beauty and moral codes and the indescribable (they spend thirteen pages describing it) pull they feel towards each other and their forbidden attraction. The only difference is that Talia reads hers out to him lovingly and Battinson stutters through his, is beet red and can't look her in the eye. She thinks it's adorable. They're so in love it's sickening. They're literal Morticia and Gomez variants

Everybody moved on I stayed here

"As if you care them or me"

"I never want to see you hurt"

"But you're the only one i would allow to"

INVENTED TRUE LOVE

She’s living my dream right in front of my eyes.

The Psychology of Talia

For throwntotheair, who has a few questions about Talia. :) I’m grouping this under a few broad questions that should bleed into answering some of the others you mentioned.

The preface of this, of course, is that all of my answers are based in the character of Talia al Ghul prior to Grant Morrison writing her. So the 30+ years of content and development we had beforehand. Grant largely ignored the fundamental pieces of her character that were recurring themes over the years, turned her into an infanticidal rapist and, generally speaking, made her as 2-dimensional as possible. His interpretation also gave Talia wildly inconsistent motives, so he is not a good measure for delving into her character.

What are her motives?

Talia has always been motivated by one thing: love. Love for her father, love for Bruce, love for Damian. Even love for the planet (though less so than Ra’s). Each step of her journey has love somewhere in the why. The primary conflict for her, especially early on, was the tug-of-war between acting for good (because of her love for Bruce) or acting for evil (because of her love for her father). 

The animated series still gives one of the best summaries of Talia’s goals, too: she says that she believes in her father’s vision for the world, but not in his means (namely mass genocide). 

Even in dealing with Damian (Morrison, again, notwithstanding), I think she meant everything for love (I’ll explain more in the ‘why did she raise him this way’ section).

When she throws Jason into the Lazarus Pit in Lost Days, her letter to him says that she has done this “for love.”

Despite her badassery, Talia is actually a very loving, empathic person (though sometimes she denies it). Either way, love is at the core of what she does. For her father, that love spills over into loyalty…most of the time.

Why the loyalty to Ra’s (Why has she never stood against him?)

Wellllll this is two parts. The first question: love and indoctrination. The second question: she has.

First we have to understand that Talia is pretty much a psychological trainwreck. In Batman Chronicles #8, we see one of the only stories that’s specifically from Talia’s point-of-view. This and Lost Days are as close as we really get to such direct access to her thoughts.

Yeah. She’s messed up. We should note that Ra’s, despite his being just about Worst Dad Ever, does genuinely love Talia, in his own way.

Realize that Talia has been raised exclusively in Ra’s in environment (like Damian) and that the way she raised Damian was A LOT like she was raised. She’s in a place where he father is viewed as a deity, it’s this massive, powerful cult, and so there’s a level of indoctrination going on.

But that said…Even from the beginning, Talia was defying her father.

She thinks for herself and, growing through the years, she becomes increasingly agitated, worn down and plain ol’ fed up with her father. I would argue that in most cases, she betrays him for Bruce (or Jason, or Damian) because she knows he’s wrong.

(Prior this panel, Batman asks why Talia is betraying Ra’s, and if it’s because she loves him:)

Doesn’t she seem to be lacking independence?

Here’s where I think there was a massive missed opportunity. Talia, after being shot for betraying her father in Tower of Babel, nopes out and goes off on her own. She’s fed up with both Bruce AND Ra’s.

Ra’s shows up and has Talia kidnapped to bring her back. She winds up rescuing Bruce one more time before leaving BOTH of them and heading off to Hong Kong, where she becomes a successful businesswoman in her own right.

At the time, Lex Luthor is about to run for president. He shows up at her door:

Talia becomes CEO of LexCorp. I wish so much that more happened in this era for her. She butts heads with Superman a few times (and even teamed up once and it was awesome), but it was so under-utilized. In the end, though, she runs the long con on Luthor, willfully bankrupts LexCorp and sells off the assets to Wayne Enterprises. Mostly just to spite him.

She hates Lexcorp mostly because she’s an environmentalist. And because Luthor.

So she’s this awesome independent businesswoman who manages to trick one of the smartest men in the DCU.

Unfortunately, her half-sister shows up during this era in Death and the Maidens. She kidnaps and tortures Talia by murdering her over and over and bringing her back with her Lazarus Pit. This goes on until Talia’s psyche shatters.

Nyssa brainwashes Talia, first with intent to kill Ra’s. Ra’s eventually kills Talia.

When Nyssa kills Ra’s, she and Talia both continue with Ra’s mission (with Nyssa as the Demon’s Head until her death). Then Talia, still brainwashed, becomes the Demon’s Head and leads into the modern area (as with Villains United which ran pretty close up to the New 52).

Why did she raise Damian in that environment?

To put it short: because it was how she was raised and because she knows it’s the only way for him to survive. When Talia was 18 (her first appearance) she was kidnapped by an enemy of her father. Her entire life has been violence, danger and bloodshed. Her father is a powerful, dangerous man in a dangerous world.

If Damian had not been trained, in her mind, he would not have survived. I think she believes it was the best way for him to be able to protect himself. Some indoctrination bleeds through (as her raising him would be post-brainwashing, though the timeline is a bit wonky). 

I hope that helps! I’ve got a lot more essays in on my blog, plus one that’s a comprehensive account of Talia’s history.

Another poem w brutalia vibes

i just think she's neat

please like/reblog if you save

Al Ghul.

Btw Damian has Talia's kind of autism not Bruce's kind of autism

Why do you love Talia so much and how did your journey with DC and Talia start?

Thank you for the question! I have always had a love for Batman since I was a child, watching cartoons of his mostly. I didn’t have any access to comics when I was younger for a plethora of reasons, but I did have video games, and the Arkham series is probably one of my strongest hyper fixations. Though honestly, as much as I enjoyed Talia in Arkham city, I didn’t begin to feel a strong attachment to her character until a few years ago!

I really couldn’t tell you why. I chose to read up on her randomly and felt such a strong emotional pull towards her, stronger than anything I’ve felt. She quickly became my absolute favorite character in any media, someone I could talk about happily for hours and hours. If only I had people to talk to! It’s a genuine shame she has such a small fan base.

On the other hand, Batman was my favorite hero because of how human he is. There are a lot of human heroes but their humanity isn’t quite as striking to me as his is. One thing I adore about Batman is how silly he is, while at the same time, being extremely serious. One of the issues a lot of people seem to have, in my opinion, is taking him TOO seriously.

He’s a man in a bat costume! He drives a batmobile and uses batarangs and batclaws and that’s very silly! But he’s also a gritty detective at the same time! I LOVE BATMAN!!!

I like plenty of other DC characters, but the Gotham bunch are definitely my favorites 😙

could you draw damian and talia bonding? ☺️

This took me so long, I don't even know why. Anyways, here it is! 👐👐🫶🫶