i think carol and talia are shockingly similar with enough to differentiate each other that they can bounce off each other as foils. both were established as major (and in carol’s case, primary) love interests to some of dc’s biggest heroes. both were introduced as daughters of incredibly powerful men with large organizations and strong paternalistic misogyny streaks. both are largely defined (at first glance) by these two men in their respective lives. both have whirlwind, deeply passionate, equal-but-not, tragic, doomed romances with their respective loves (who are embarrassing white guys). both are heavily, heavily gendered characters; male carol ferris and male talia al ghul would be so radically different as to be unrecognizable because both women are shaped hard by the misogyny of their worlds. both feel love so strong it hurts. and both have been ceos!
but it’s the differences that are the most interesting, because they clash so directly. compare the topic of male heirs from the first introductions of both fathers:
carl ferris has no sons. he begrudgingly hands ferris aircraft in the hands of his daughter so he can go fuck off and play golf or whatever. carol does an amazing job with it, but carl continuously fails to respect carol’s work because she’s a woman beyond lip service, outright bemoaning how disappointing it was that she was born a woman. carol struggles between her need for power and respect, her internalized misogyny, and her own desires. she wants love and intimacy, but because her society has gendered these as feminine and she has been raised to understand femininity as shameful, carol represses them to focus on the (gendered masculine) pursuit of ambition, which then explodes into a cocktail of passion and violence as star sapphire and predator. carol has been fighting for respect from a father who never respected her from the day she was born, and in turn, fighting herself. even her name is a mark of the carl ferris jr. she failed at being.
ra’s al ghul (at this point) has no sons. he wants to find an heir, and passing the torch onto talia is a no-go because she’s a girl, so he goes for a son-in-law. i wouldn’t be me if i didn’t point out that this is a racialised decision; how on earth could the orientals be more progressive than us at a time when we in the wonderful west are still wrapping our heads around female leaders in the great year of 1971, denny o’neil thought. but i think this is also true to talia’s character. at this point in time, talia is only ever in the action as a reaction to someone she loves (ra’s and bruce) either 1. asking her to do something or 2. getting hurt and talia goes out on a tear of vengeance (also racialised: duty over personal ambition.) she doesn’t want to be heir and has zero qualms with being passed over. she is a woman who would rather be in the spa, lounging about, smoking a cig and having a gorgeous cuppa and reading a fashion magazine or blowing off her medical school work. she’s very feminine and she knows it and likes it that way! talia is content staying out of her father’s business in a way that i think carol would find pathetic, which is fun!
talia is also a fair bit younger than carol, especially at the point of their introductions. she wises up to the fact that being nothing more than ra’s al ghul’s little girl and bruce’s doomed love sucks big time. she has a secret baby. she leaves her father to die. she goes into a depressive, self-indulgent spiral—and then lex luthor knocks on her door and hands her the keys to his company, and not only does talia do a fantastic job of both running lexcorp and sabotaging it simultaneously, but this is her arc of identifying who talia al ghul is on her own two feet, something carol also had to do the painful way.
wouldn’t it be awesome to see them meet as two brilliant women in the corporate world butting heads while finding common ground? both of whom are far more dangerous and bloody underneath those circumstances? where they can bond over their struggles with sexism and gender roles? where they can have a strong relationship with another woman, someone important in their life who won’t use that gendered relationship against them? who knows what its like?
and then in the 2000s both had their arcs and steady development snapped in half and left to rot when carol became a flat pink girl power character and talia became a dragon lady so we will never get that beautiful vision. but we’ll always have the power of the word doc and tumblr post. amen
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