JABBER WOULD BE SUCH A GOOD SOULS BOSS. THINK OF HIS FUCKING TRASH TALK DIALOGUE. HE ALREADY FUCKING HAS A PHASE TRANSITION. THINK OF HIS "YOU DIED" LINE. ZANKA WOULD BE SUCH A GOOD SOULS PROTAGONIST CHARACTER THROWING HIMSELF OVER AND OVER AGAIN AT THE FIGHT UNTIL HE FINALLY FUCKING WON. AND THEN THEY MAKE OUT. HELLO CAN ANYONE HEAR ME
Something that always gets me in ships is the sunshine x grumpy trope ā except it has the delicious twist of the "sunshine" actually not being very sunshine at all, just good at pretending, and the "grumpy" being the softest person you've ever met ā they just have a rough way of showing it.
That exact dinamic will make me climp the walls of my room at 3 am while reading.
I propose to you: Dysfunctional Codependent Bros ā¢ļø
They do not like each other. They love each other. They wanna strangle the other AND themselves.
But. But Dick bedrugingly offerered his couch to crash on when Jason got stabbed in the stomach and needed a place to rest.
And when Dick woke up the morning after, with no Jason in sight, he found a full breakfast on his kitchen table (because Jason knew he hadnāt eaten the night before).
Redhood shoots Nightwing without hesitance, but only in places where he knows the damage won't be permanent and only if he knows someone is nearby to patch him up.
Nightwing goes all out fighting him, but secretly checks Jason for major injuries when they separate (if he had any, heād help. Fuck what Jason thought)
Dick makes sure Jason is passed out on his side, when he brings him back to his safe house.
Jason makes sure Dick gets inside, when he finds the other huddled up in a corner during a rainstorm
Roy does not like Jason. He kills and refuses to give people a chance and is just annoying and rude in general. Yeah, the guy saved him, and yeah he still hangs around Jason but it's mostly to keep him in line. If he sticks around, he can reign Jason in on the kills. Hopefully.
Jason finds Roy extremely interesting. He's so intrigued by him. Yeah, he's annoying and an asshole at times, but he's so good. Jason kinda loathes how good he is. And he's also, yk, very hot.
Roy slowly manages to get Jason to soften up. Jason helps Roy during his bad days, when he can't make himself get up from bed and Lian's ghost hangs around like a weight on his chest.
They scream and fight and get angry at each other.
Jason leaves (he can't get hurt, if he leaves first)
Roy, for some reason, chases after him (He is always the one chasing after people)
Jason comes back. Doesn't apologize, not verbally, at least. He shows it through actions, tho.
Eventually, Roy forgives him (it doesn't even take that long, Roy remembers the time he didn't have anyone) (he doesn't want to go back to that)
Finally, finally, they manage to sort almost everything out, and they just. stick together.
I just want this kind of one-sided enemies to lovers, where they get to know each other beyond the initial appearances, and also to accept and help the other.
How do you feel about Damienās Mom Talia Al Ghul? Because some people said sheās a victim of bad racist writing and sheās had a bad portrayal in the animated movies. Is Talia really just victim of bad writing or sheās actually a horrible mother/person? Iām just confused because when I read the comics about Talia and the bad things she did and I just assumed thatās was part of her character because sheās a morally questionable villain of course sheās not a āgood civilian person.ā I knew DC is a dark adult comic book series and I already expected going in that the villain characters like Talia would committed terrible/horrible actions against the heroes. Like for example when she drugged Bruce and took advantage of him, I was slightly shocked but wasnāt surprised. Cuz to me this was the dark stuff DC was known for doing.
Alrighty, so the answer is a little bit of both!
TW for sexual assault mentions, miscarriage, parental abuse, etc.
There's a TL;DR ("too long, didn't read" summary) under the cut if you don't wanna read my report which is pretty awesome and was fun to write.
So, nobody seems to be able to agree on who Talia is at her core, and that's generally par for the course for a comic book character with multiple writers. She's been around since 1971, so that's already 52 years! And like Greek myth, there's just a lot of different interpretations of the character.
Let's get to the nitty gritty before we talk history. In 2006, writer Grant Morrison established that Talia drugged and raped Bruce, conceiving their son Damian (and also for some reason adding a whole unnecessary "artificial womb" thing? I don't get it either). However, this is based off the fact, which Morrison later admitted, that they misremembered the story they based the Batman and Son arc off of, and later comic arcs (in 2012 and 2014) would retcon the incident as consensual. Put a pin in this.
Talia was originally more of a damsel in distress slash prize for Bruce. Remember, this was the 70s. Her main deal is being the daughter of Ra's al Ghul and thus if Batman marries her, he becomes the heir, which Ra's wants. Despite not wanting to succeed Ra's, Bruce and Talia do share romantic attraction and Ra's considers them married. Then, later on, they do actually marry and she gets pregnant, and then Talia realizes that Bruce will always be in danger having to protect her and their child, so she fakes a miscarriage and they dissolve their marriage. She gives the child to an orphanage, and he is given the name Ibn al Xu'ffasch, or "son of the bat". This is the story arc Morrison adapted later.
Talia was kinda badass in the period before 2006, where she was sort of an anti-villain. She breaks out and starts having her own self after Ra's engages her to Bane whom she despises. She, under the name Talia Head, runs LexCorp as CEO while Lex Luthor is President of the United States, and basically not only tips Superman off about all his plans, but sells LexCorp's shares to Wayne Enterprises leaving Lex functionally penniless. Then she gets brainwashed and basically evil-fied by her half-sister Nyssa Raatko who literally kills her over and over, resurrecting her each time in the Lazarus Pit as an extreme form of torture and reprogramming. She usually does more evil shit after this like joining leagues of supervillains and such. However, her motives of helping Jason Todd recover and train are usually ascribed to her love for Bruce and not wanting Jason to kill him.
Then after 2006 she goes full tilt crazy ex girlfriend and murders people, trained Selina Kyle to resist any and all psychological coercion to reveal Bruce's identity, and PLANTS A DEVICE IN DAMIAN'S SPINE THAT LETS HER CONTROL HIS BODY, and reveals that she's started cloning him because she thinks he's too weak and disowns him.
Then comes the New 52 (the part where DC did a reboot to make everybody darker and "more realistic" that absolutely nobody liked, so it started in 2011 and then DC did another reboot in 2016 to make it better) and Talia is just off the wall completely evil. Genocide, cloning Damian, killing Damian, being resurrected, then fighting an ancient alien cult and claiming she's redeemed, then literally rejoining the League of Assassins moments later.
Incidentally, apparently Grant Morrison wrote Bruce, Talia, and Damian from their own experiences as a child of divorce, which is just... wow. Like... that's just a lot to unpack there, but we're just gonna step past it.
As of the DC Rebirth reboot, Talia is more or less sort of back to being anti-villain, still yes a killer, but also more emotionally open and supportive of her son and back to trying for true redemption.
Let's take, as I usually try to do, the sum total of these experiences and from other sources and try to average it out.
Unfortunately, despite the retconning, a lot of people now still see Talia's rape of Bruce as canon. I did too for the longest time, and honestly, although it makes Talia despicable and completely irredeemable in a very visceral way, it also does allow for interesting dynamics for Bruce and Damian, the batfam and Talia, Bruce in general, and allows there to be discussion for the tragically underconsidered circumstance for female-on-male sexual assault, and by having Batman, who is often used by hypermasculine dudebros for their weird ideals of stoic toxic masculinity be a victim, and be vulnerable, and go through this could be a deeply powerful arc that nobody in comics really wants to touch. It does however, deprive us of an interesting and nuanced Talia and instead catapults her right into mustache-twirling evil.
Ultimately, Talia is the daughter and heir of Ra's al Ghul. She sees no problem murdering people, and in fact she usually shares her father's genocidal ambitions of culling much of the human race to help preserve the planet. Ra's boils down to an ecoterrorist and genocidal maniac, and Talia his henchman, though when she does strike out on her own, I can't quite get a handle on her motivations. She does tout a desire for "equality and peace" but there's really no standard she gives for what this means, so I can't really see if she's just crazy or if she has good intentions.
I think, even at her best, Talia is a perfectionist and is very strict, intent on Damian being who she wants him to be. I think she has very little empathy or compassion for others, although parts of her, at her best, regret this and she tries to grow. At her worst, she is irredeemably evil, and at her best she is... morally shady to the point of never really being able to be thought of as a good guy.
I can't speak to whether or not racism plays a part in her portrayal either as mustache twirling villain or whatever. I don't know that it's necessarily bad writing because I don't know if Talia was ever intended to not be a horrible person or morally ambiguous, apart from the early days when she was mainly a figure to be pursued by Batman. When it comes down to it, adding sexual assault to her list of crimes is not going to change much because she's a mass murderer, an ecoterrorist, an abusive mother any way you slice it because she's training her child as an assassin, and generally just not great. A fascinating character, yes, but a terrible person.
TL;DR: Talia al Ghul is a terrible person in general, but the Big Incident you refer to has been retconned and is based off a poorly-remembered story. However, considering she's a mass murderer, assassin, eco-terrorist, and also let's face it classist villain, she's still not great even if you remove that from her rap sheet. She's done some cool stuff like putting Lex Luthor in his place and that one Elseworlds story where she left Bruce and gave her son to an orphanage to protect him, but otherwise, once she was made her own character and not just a love-interest-of-the-week, Talia has been morally ambiguous at best and irredeemable at worst. I can't say if it's racist or not because I don't know the motivations in her writing, but I don't know that it's necessarily bad writing to make her unsympathetically evil.
Hello, I just wanted to kinda explain some things. Talia originally was a compassionate, sympathetic and quite cheerful person. She had no problem expressing her emotions one page she's smiling another she is dramatically crying. The reason that most assumes that she is written as a cold-hearted person nowadays is because writers want her to be an exact copy of Ra.
Talia most definitely has a problem with killing. She has stated she hates being an assassin and there is no honor in being it
This is Talia after she killed a villan who was about to kill Bruce
Talia was not originally an assassin but a spy. So there wasn't much killing from her. She has stated multiple times that she is against her father's ideology.
Talia sexually assaulting Bruce is racist and retconned. Grant Morrison tried to cover up their racism as playing it off as they didn't read the comics that included Talia before their comic which is still very bad. Because how are you supposed to write a character but do not do your research on them. The reason people still believe that Talia assualted Bruce is because Grant Morrison is a well known writer.
The storyline of Talia Sa'ing Bruce is absolutely ridiculous and makes no sense because Talia is a victim herself. She was assualted by Bane (this is heavily hinted). He then basically threatens her to a lifetime of assault.
You say that Talia is morally ambiguous at best. But the point of her character is to be morally gray.
Racism most definitely plays a part in Talia recent characterization. Since 9/11, a lot of anti Arab media has been created and DC couldn't help but jump on the bandwagon.
Since 9/11 racism has turned Talia from a morally gray character into a raging evil seducing woman. Essentially promoting the racist "Dragon Lady" trope. Writers nowadays try to write it off as Talia being a one night stand to Bruce and Bruce doesn't love her which is not remotely true.
You mentioned Talia and Bruce's getting married. This is what Bruce told Talia after he found out.
A part of the reason why Bruce couldn't consider the marriage real is because she's his enemy daughter.
Grant Morrison creating Damian and their comic about him was full on promoting the racist "Dragon Lady baby mama" trope and white savior Bruce.
Damian literally stole Talia's origin story and then people will full on hate Talia.
Speaking of the White savior Bruce trope. It's essentially saying "Boo hoo look at me I'm crying because of my evil abusive brown-skinned mother but luckily my pale-skinned father is here to save me and be a better parent."
We are not even going to go in how Bruce is a bad father to Damian
It is bad writing that makes Talia an unsympathetic person.
Going into the Selina part. Talia doing that to Selina is just plain bad writing and writers degrading Talia to prop up Selina as Bruce's better love interest (which they have done before and have done recently).
Talia has saved Selina's life in the comic Hush before. Writers are trying to portray Talia as this evil ex-girlfriend even though she was very secure in her relationship with Bruce and Bruce was the jealous overprotective one.
DC has made it a habit to degrade Talia to prop up other characters (mostly Bruce's other love interests). That's just plain racism right there.
The metal spine arc and cloning is just flat out bad writing and characterization of Talia.
Yes it was selfish for Talia to raise Damian in the league with her but she probably knew that if she gave Damian to Bruce. Bruce might not let her see him because she still works with the league (this is no excuse but rather an analysis) .
There are so many other things I want to say but this post is long enough. But what I'm going to end with is that Talia has been trying to be a better mother to Damian after years of bad writing.
OMG thank you for showing me these and for reblogging with your thoughts!
Taken within context, I can absolutely see the racist undertones of the characterization. Pre-Morrison Talia strikes me as a compelling character and you know what? I gotta say that it is bad writing that has meant that with so much time sifting through her actions and characterization that I couldn't get really any motive for her evil actions, because there wasn't any!
A Talia concerned with personal freedom, with honor as befitting her own moral code makes sense for the character, and fits her early actions like saving Bruce multiple times, especially once Ra's tries to betroth her to Bane, and her stint making a fool out of Lex Luthor. Recontextualizing her in this initial lens makes huge sense as to why she'd leave Bruce and keep Damian, probably hoping she can break away from the League and raise Damian on her own. This loving but morally ambiguous mother with her own moral code and besieged on all sides by opposition could have been such a compelling and interesting character, and I'm so mad we haven't really gotten to see her in modern times.
I will agree that DC absolutely trashes Talia to make Selina look good, as well as Bruce himself. I have my own dislike of the BatCat ship, but let's be fair, honestly it's hard to see how Selina would come out ahead when faced with a multifaceted and intriguing character like pre-Morrison Talia who occupies this liminal space between hero and villain in a really interesting way, and better imo than Selina has ever done.
And we won't get into Bruce's terrible parenting throughout comic history.
So yeah, Talia gets such a frickin bad rap, and it's almost infuriating now to see that Morrison ascribes it to just shoddily misremembering a prior story, which just... now sounds like a lame excuse for finding an easy target to turn into a mustache-twirling villain. (And with the admission on Morrison's part that they utilized their own experiences for the arc, it just makes me feel a little like questioning their attitudes towards their own mother/women in general - like there's a really weird bit I mentioned that there's a point of pointing out Damian was brought to term in an artificial womb and now I'm just getting icky vibes from that with this context)
In any case, I'm firmly in the Talia deserves better camp now, because even if compelling storylines arise from her canon characterization, it still requires having to believe in the complete 180 of her initial character.
@daminette-56 would love to keep talking about this either in reblogs or messages! How would you characterize Talia if you could, and how do you see that affecting her current character and situation, and how does that affect other things like fan shipping and other ideas? I find it all fascinating!
I have many thoughts on Talia's character. Talia is a morally gray character who was initially an anti hero before Grant Morrison came along. Talia is very intelligent as she holds many degrees and skills. She has different morals than what she was taught as she has betrayed her father many times. Though most times she can not fully leave the league because she is so loyal to Ra. And if she leaves the league something happens like her half sister Nyssa kidnapping, deceiving and torturing her making her crazy.
Talia is a very strong person who has killed and beaten up sexual assaulters (canon) and she has protected and saved many kids. Talia has been portrayed as this savvy businesswoman but she has also been portrayed as someone who cares about motherhood. Which is a nice balance a strong female role who somewhat has traditional beliefs.
Talia character back then is unfortunately not influencing most comics nowadays. DC is trying to build back her character like in a recent comic which Damian got injured and she cried and spoke to him in Arabic but still some comics are still being written by the influence of the Grant Morrison storyline.
DC butchering Talia's character has definitely affected the people who ship Brutalia. Some people will see Brutalia posts and say that the person is shipping Bruce with his assaulter. Or they will comment writing when DC portrayed Talia as this crazy jealous ex.
I checked your posts that includes Talia Al Ghul. But you placing Noah Schnapp as Damian in your fan cast is very wrong. Damian is mixed with brown skin like his mother. Yes pale Arabs exist but people in the DC fandom have a habit of making fan art of Damian saying that excuse. But really they are being racist and erasing Talia from Damian because of the racism towards Talia and Damian. Damian brown skin is what people relate to evil as Talia is portrayed as the evil Poc mother and Bruce the perfect white savior father.
(I didn't look at the rest of the fan cast, I was scrolling past it and then I saw Noah Schnapp and I wondered who that was meant to be)
Also another post with Talia being homophobic and Ra wouldn't. Ra was/is the one "obsessed" with getting an heir not Talia. Writers portray Talia as the one obsessed with an heir so they can write a crazy ex-girlfriend trope of her
So that fancast was about five years ago, and definitely not reflecting my current views of the matter - I've found it terribly difficult in more recent posts to find a fancast for Damian that acknowledges his heritage and skin tone - Not excusing myself for my mistake, merely explaining that that was before I had started to educate myself on such issues, and thus was not malicious, but from a place of ignorance.
From my newfound perspective on Talia, I have to agree that Talia would likely not have homophobic views (at least, pre-Morrison Talia wouldn't), especially since personal freedom tends to be a general desire for her character that conflicts with her loyalty to her father. I was operating on the post-Morrison portrayals of her, including the Batman: Bad Blood movie I had recently watched which only reinforced that position since it contains Talia as the main villain.
Do you think Ra's would be homophobic/the League in general? Considering Ra's general eco-terrorism slash genocidal vibe, and his desire to find an "heir" suggests that he would be, at least when it comes to his children, as I am aware of storylines where Ra's attempts to transfer his consciousness down his familial lines as another form of immortality, through Damian. Perhaps he would only insist upon his child engaging in a heterosexual relationship he approved of to create a vessel.
I don't personally ship Bruce and Talia, although I admit my estimation of them is rising now. Of the three general major canon ships (Bruce/Diana, Bruce/Selina, and Bruce/Talia), Talia has risen to match Diana, with Selina at a far distant third. Though I must confess I prefer Bruce/Silver St. Cloud. And of course for non-canon, Bruce/Clark. But yes, I can see how DC's mishandling of the character and the current most-well-known portrayal of her would hinder Brutalia shippers.
There could be an argument, I suppose, for the continuing portrayal of Talia as a savvy businesswoman and invested mother - imagine her as a counterpoint to Bruce as they co-parent Damian, with Bruce having to acknowledge his own failings as a father and Talia focuses on trying to help her son attain his own freedom to choose even while she has to do morally dubious things to protect everyone from the League of Shadows. Or maybe a Talia that joins the Justice League and makes the transition from anti-villain to anti-hero!
@daminette-56 for that matter, you know, Talia should have had the kind of arc that Harley Quinn had! Talia was an anti-villain in a relationship with a villain and is constantly caught between her own wants and her loyalty to said villain, and yet Talia is not only way more sympathetic but also was never really a villain, and yet we see people saying Harley who was part of Jason Todd's torture and murder would become part of the batfamily - thinking with this context, I can only consider more racism as part of the culprit in Harley, who has been a villain in her own right in addition to being accomplice to the Joker getting a redemption arc and widespread favor while Talia is continuously trashed despite an arc where she goes to full hero would make much more sense.
fic idea where Jason is HoH (god knows why ā maybe an incident with an explosion idk) and doesn't tell anyone.
It takes a while for the Bats (sibs) to figure it out, but it's purely because they thought he was ignoring them.
Jason still has no problem in the field ā he was trained to fight even under sensory deprivation, this is nothing new.
Now. The thing is, Roy knows he's HoH. Did Jason tell him? No, but Roy's not dumb, and he saw the device Jason's put in his helmet to amplify sounds; he saw how his gaze tended to linger just a tad more on people's lips or how he preferred to always be face to face.
So yeah, Roy knew Jason wasn't looking at his lips for anything other than pure necessity, but listen ā If you had been pining over the same guy for god knows how long, you'd get flustered too if he stared at your lips like that!
Jason's attention burned, it left you breathless. He focused like an eagle would on a prey, memorizing and cataloging every minute detail. Roy couldn't get enough. Roy knew it didn't mean anything, and yet he craved it.
What Roy didn't know, however, is that Jason had become accustomed to looking at people's lips from the corner of his eye instead of directly at them, and that he stared at Roy's lips simply because he could and he wanted to.
Jesus Christ I donāt give a fuck about that poll competition but can you guys stop tagging jayroy/jaykyle etc when itās just you bashing the ship AND bullying people for absolutely no reason? I dont give a shit if you have a personal vendetta with jason or heās your arch nemesis or whatever just stop ruining the fan space šāļø just tag anti jayroy I genuinely couldnāt care less about what you have to say regarding the ship or jason, you still have absolutely no right to bully and insult people over FICTIONAL CHARACTERS ā¼ļø man I just want content for my fav ships I donāt care about this fuck ass poll
pixelskylines
areudirty
gummygunk
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