#absolutely fascinating character

[dragonsareawesome123]

Equius is truly something else lmao

[whetstonefires]

The thing about Talia al Ghul is...

Well, there’s a lot of things about Talia, from where I’m standing, but the top two are that

1) Nothing about her can ever make sense unless viewed through the lens of her father being incredibly, systematically abusive on several different levels, and

2) The better I got to know her, and her whole character history since her invention in the 70s, the more the origin story for Damian where she drugged the hell out of Bruce seemed completely in-character.

Talia has no idea what healthy boundaries are supposed to look like. Talia has no idea how to love someone without hurting or owning them.

This isn’t her fault, exactly, but it’s where her characterization keeps circling back to. Even when she means completely well, she’s toxic, or controlling, or thinks relationships are a zero-sum game wherein saving someone’s life entitles her to them. And that makes absolute sense, because she has spent almost her whole life under Ra’s al Ghul’s control.

I started out feeling sorry for Talia, when I’d just been introduced to her character, and that’s where I ended up, too. Except instead of feeling like the tragedy was that she was stuck between two people she loved and Bruce was letting her down and kindasorta leading her on by not being willing to commit to helping her overcome her villainous upbringing, by the end I was like:

Good call, Bruce.

You are worth more than pouring yourself into someone with no moral compass of her own, who dangles the possibility that you could fix her and save her from herself, if you just let her have you. As if you were a negotiable substance, to be bartered and consumed and built upon. As if her transferring her unhealthy dependency on her father to you instead would actually be romantic, instead of a recipe for utter massive dysfunction.

As if you could actually change her, by loving her the right way.

It’s not a cool thing to ask of female heroes, and it’s not okay to expect of you, either.

The tragedy still is, really truly is, that she’s trapped. But it’s not about being between Ra’s and Bruce, except in her own head. The tragedy is that she can’t walk away from the world according to Ra’s, even when she manages to defy him. It’s that she’s trapped in herself, and as long as she keeps looking to other people to define her, to save her, to tell her what the rules are, to serve as tokens in a game played to win, she cannot get out.