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cologona · 10 months ago

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I’ve previously been happy to dismiss that sex scene as a simple combo of author misogyny and Talia having ~Pit Madness~ following her torture in DATM (and those are definitely still important points I stand by) but I love that this reading makes her actions have some actual discernible motivations- it makes it a lot easier for me to acknowledge that scene as an actual part of the story.

Finding character motivations for everything Talia Al Ghul does and says in Lost Days

People say she was manipulating Jason to be more violent but like... was she?? Why would she be doing that??? She spends years trying to heal him for Bruce and then tries to make him more violent towards Bruce because... ????????

I've read Lost Days a fair few times and it never felt like she was being cruel or manipulative and this has confused the fuck out of me for a long time. Since I'm going to be writing her into my Jason centric fic pretty soon, I figured it would be good to go back to Lost Days and really focus in on her and her character motivations.

This is a post because I do my best thinking through the act of writing essays, and figured someone out there might also be interested.

tl;dr In the text as written Talia does her level best to guide Jason to become a Hero again out of genuine compassion. It is her explicit goal to make Jason less vengeful, less violent, and more like the hero he was before he died. She is not predatory towards him, and the only times she works in ways that could be damaging to him are when she feels her own safety is threatened by him. Talia is depicted as a good but flawed person shaped by the trauma Ra's and the League has put her through.

So yeah, wildly over detailed analysis of everything Talia does and says during Lost Days under the cut:

Scene one: Ra's and Talia yelling dramatically on a lawn right after Talia uses a Lazarus Pit on Jason.

Her stated justification for doing so is "I did--what--needed to be done" (em dashes for choking). Considering she risked a LOT to do this, I figure she's probably telling the truth. She believed this was necessary.

Then we flash back to her first learning about Jason's death. She posits that his death will essentially break Bruce.

In the panels directly after this she's shown looking at a picture of Jason and Bruce, face in hands, clearly upset. Probably primarily for Bruce, but like idk she's an empathic human I feel like it's safe to say she's upset for the kid who died too, especially since the picture centers Jason prominently, with focus/close-up panels on both Bruce and Jason, with Jason's scanning first.

Then we have the sequence of her learning that Jason is still alive, through her agents who have been instructed to keep a very close eye on Bruce.

Her first big decision is to bring him to her Father. She doesn't make any attempt to hide him, so it's either a good idea to her or a necessary one. Ra's obviously wants to figure out how he managed to cheat death, and it seems likely to me, given that she's loyal to him, that she'd also want to do so. She doesn't seem to want him dead, even if she's at odds with him pretty much the whole time to one degree or another.

Then we get her investigating Jason's ressurection and the doctor she's got telling her about his brain damage and the Doc claims he's not getting better

We're just gonna breeze on passed that autistic affect weirdness...

She disagrees.

This is the third time now that Talia has had faith in the humanity and emotional capacity of people the rest of the League write off as being capable of nothing but violence. Considering she's been right the other times it stands to reason that she's right about this too. It also says a lot about her character that this is something she's repeatedly done.

She attempts to prove he's getting better by slapping Jason across the face, declaring, "He never fights back when it's me! Explain that! Never when it's me!"

This strongly suggests that she must treat him differently than the rest of the league, specifically that she treats him with more kindness and more attention. He recognizes her as someone safe, who he doesn't need to fight.

This is further backed up by the next page

Ra's then decides that all this has been a complete waste of time and demands that Jason be put out to pasture so he can't distract Talia from her work for the League.

During this argument Ra's posits that she thinks handing over a healed Jason would make Bruce love her, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I think Ra's is misreading her, in exactly the same way all of the League has been misreading everyone all issue: he's failing to understand that people are capable of actual love and compassion. He's interpreting her acts of kindness and love as something manipulative and selfish. Maybe that's something she believes or hopes for on some level, but it's obviously not her "real" motive here like Ra's thinks.

This is what makes her decide that it's necessary to make one last attempt to heal him, and get him out somewhere safer than with the League. It's a desperate last ditch attempt, but she's a competent motherfucker.

The rest of the issue is narrated as a letter Talia sends off with him in the bag of supplies she gives him. In it she says that she had other reasons for attempting to save him.

So, at the end of issue #1 we have three clear motives for why she healed Jason:

To heal Jason is to heal Bruce.

She has a basic sense of decency and wants to help a murdered kid recover. Jason healing is its own reward.

She wants to find out how Jason "survived" so that her Father might be able to replicate that for himself.

Healing Jason might bring her emotionally closer to Bruce.

ALL of these are based in love, and thus could qualify for what she meant in those last few lines of her letter. However, I think I want to emphasis that she almost certainly has to be including love for Jason himself, not just for what Jason represents to Bruce, though Bruce is still a huge focus for her.

And she didn't tell Bruce because Ra's might kill Jason. He doesn't want Batman to know he's alive, ever, and may very well kill Jason to keep that secret.

ON TO ISSUE #2

This is where it gets a lot harder to figure out why she's doing things.

Talia's first act is to refuse to tell Ra's where Jason is. Her second revealed act is that while tossing Jason into the ocean to help him escape she says this:

"Do not seek him out. You remain unavenged."

Third thing she does is check up on her loyal agents who tell her "We know where he's going You're not going to like it." This is immediately followed by the reveal that Jason is going to Gotham.

So uhhhh... Why doesn't Talia want him to go to Bruce now? Also, why does Talia think that being unavenged would mean Jason going to Bruce was a bad idea? Like how is the unavenged bit not a complete nonsequitor?

Cause the thing is, we the audience know what Jason is like in the future, Lost Days was written after UtRH, but Talia doesn't know Jason's personality, she's only met him while he was incapable of communication, so what reason does she have to assume this would impact him like this?

Hypothesis one: She knew about Felipe, thinks he killed him, and thus counts him as a killer of abusers, someone who would want revenge.

Seems pretty unlikely. There's absolutely nothing in the text to support this, it's completely made up conjecture. Also, she doesn't seem to think Jason is the type of person to do revenge all that harshly in later panels.

Hypothesis two: She's counting on the temporary adrenaline-rage-pain boost from the Pit to convince him to be mad about the whole unavenged thing.

Why tho? Like, for realsies, there's no reason for her to try to do this? If this is a plan to keep him away from Bruce, it's a dumb one, like why would that be her choice of strategy?? Also the letter contradicts this.

Hypothesis three: She believes it was wrong of Bruce not to avenge him, or at least thinks that most people would be incredibly angry to find they weren't avenged

Baring her just being fucking precognitive and knowing the future for no good reason, this seems like the most likely cause. Growing up in the League hasn't exactly given her a view of how healthy people handle their anger, and violent retaliation is a nigh daily obstacle for her to navigate. It means she told him that because she thought it was important and she probably always intended to tell him whenever he healed enough to understand it.

Hypothesis four: She assumed him finding out was inevitable, and wanted to do that in a controlled manner... uhhh... and the best controlled manner avaliable was... while flinging him off a cliff??? Instead of in the letter?????

Not buying this one.

We see Jason try to kill Bruce and then get him explaining himself to Talia.

That's... that's not how sociopathic works I'm pretty sure... whateves...

Talia seems to have believed there would have been a fight about the Joker, but not that Jason would have actually tried to kill him. Or at least not that Jason would have tried to really, truly kill him in such a cold, calculated way once all forms of Laz juice were out of his system.

So again, why the fuck was she preventing him and Bruce from meeting?! Would the Dark Knight not have survived a fist fight with an angry sixteen year old??

I don't get it. That's uhhhh- that doesn't make any sense to me. I guess she was just wary of how bad the confrontation might get, but not fully expecting this kind of rage? Maybe she was acting much more confident of her decisions in front of her father and was really worried about this outcome? I dunno, and that's all the evidence we've got!

And now we have a new problem! Why does Talia agree to help him?

She believes she's released a curse into this world. She believes that she has kickstarted a nasty cycle of violence spiral. She doesn't want to see Bruce hurt or killed by his kid.

So the only conclusion left is that she thinks she can better mitigate the damage by helping and misdirecting than she can by actually confronting Jason. Considering who she interacts with, that seems perfectly reasonable.

ON TO ISSUE #3

We get some proper answers here hopefully

Our previous idea about why she was helping him was correct, this is an attempt to keep him less violent, steer him towards other things, and let his desire for revenge fizzle or find a different target.

She's not giving him over to Bruce because Bruce would never forgive her for having kept Jason from him... And also Jason will fucking kill Bruce.

Make special note here of the idea that sex is why she isn't beating the crap out of this guy. Put a pin in that. It'll be important later.

Back down at the murder ranch, Jason finishes killing his teacher and then explains himself

I believe she's genuinely happy about this, because it is actually a step in the direction she wants him to take. He went from being completely obsessed with just killing the father who didn't avenge him, to saving a bunch of kids and delaying his own revenge goals to do it. The tin man IS growing a heart. Her plan is, miraculously, kinda working!

ON TO ISSUE #4

Further proof that her plan is working: Jason leaves Rip, the mercenary driver, alive. He's developing standards for who he is and isn't willing to kill, and those standards are evolving because he is being pushed outside his conflict with Bruce.

His treatment of the bomber's connection with the mob is further proof of this.

That little smile and her gently nudging him towards the idea that he's picking "old habits" back up is very telling. She's guiding him back to the path of actually being a Hero. I think this is meant to imply that Talia is deliberately throwing scumbags towards him to not only distract him, but also to remind him of the heroism he did before he died and give him new purpose beyond mere violence towards Bruce.

And again, her plan is working! He's doing hero stuff!

Aaaaand now we have another curveball. Why show him Tim?

Again, him finding out about this was probably inevitable. He seems more chill, the dark circles under his eyes are gone, I think she's hoping that while in the middle of a new investigation Jason will be in as good a place as she can find to tell him about this.

It's better than mid cliff dive, if nothing else.

Now, to head this off at the pass, because I've seen people assert this in other posts before: this is definitively, absolutely, 100% guaranteed, NOT WHEN TITANS TOWER HAPPENS. He hasn't even come up with using the red hood as a persona when she shows him this picture, so even if he let the extremely time sensitive bombing plot go for a day or two worth of private jetting to beat up the new guy, there's no way in HELL Tim would be able to recognize the Red Hood as Jason. Heck, Tim wouldn't even be with that set of Titans yet, the fucking HUSH plotline hasn't even happened yet!! Okay moving on...

ON TO ISSUE #5

Talia isn't in this one

Jason acts as a Hero. Tim man definitely has a heart.

I really like this plotline tbh, it's just great.

He kills all but one of the Russian mobsters that come to kill him and then he runs out of ammo on the last, and that guy offers up the Joker's location in exchange for his life.

This is when the Tin Man relapses.

ON TO ISSUE #6

CONTENT WARNING FOR DISCUSSION OF CONSENT ISSUES

He hunts the Joker down and fails to kill him. I want to emphasis here, that failing to kill the Joker is a failure to adhere to the morals that Jason has established for himself, and a failure to keep being an anti-hero the way Talia was encouraging him to be.

This is not him being a good guy. This is him getting worse again. This is him failing to care about the world and things other than his own revenge.

Once again he explains himself to Talia, and reveals that he's known for a while now that she's been stalling him.

And then they fuck, and Jason wakes up alone.

So what just happened and why?

First of all I think the fact he KNEW he was being stalled combined with his heroism prior to the Joker being brought up strongly implies that Talia's plan would have kept working and that Jason would have kept letting it work, drawing him more and more into just being an anti-hero. He has a heart, he has morals, but his rage for Bruce and the Joker eclipses those morals pretty completely. Talia's plan was always to guide him away from revenge and it might have worked if he hadn't run out of ammo at the wrong time.

Secondly, Talia has just been given a bunch of reasons to feel threatened. Her plot was revealed, and Jason no longer has reason to believe that she isn't an obstacle to his goals.

Considering the sheer amount of violence that Talia regularly narrowly escapes only through manipulation and leveraging men's emotions, it seems pretty reasonable to me that she'd assume she needed to do both those things in order to protect herself.

She tells Jason about Ra's death, claiming that she's angry with Bruce for that. I don't know if this is the truth, but it would serve this purpose either way. She's giving him reasons to believe she's still on his side. Then she gets emotional leverage on him by sleeping with him. Take that pin out of the fact that she didn't beat that other guy for talking out of turn to her because she was fucking him. Then she escapes while he's asleep and only contacts him again from afar.

She does both of these things because she is afraid that a freshly refocused on vengeance Jason will hurt or kill her if she doesn't. After all, she herself is a killer. Jason might just decide it's her turn to join his other teachers.

The scene of them sleeping together isn't framed as traumatic for Jason; he seems to be perfectly willing.

There two very important questions that need answered before we cast judgments though: Is Jason still a minor when this happens? How old is Talia in comparison to Jason?

The only indication of timeline that we have is that it takes place JUST prior to Hush, as the story ends with Jason meeting Tomas Elliot. According to the Batman Chronology Project, Tim should be 16 during the events of Hush. We know Jason is about two years older than Tim, making him 18 during this scene.

According to Dennis O'Neil "I’m pretty sure that Talia is still a young woman – young by our standards, not just her father’s." According to some random fucker on an ancient comicvine forum going by the handle "brock4618", O'Neil said in a different interview that she was 18 when Bruce kissed her and is about Dick's age, not Bruce's age. I can't find O'Neil saying that, but it does line up with the quote we know is real.

So this was a case of an extremely traumatized 18 year old boy agreeing to sleep with a woman in her twenties after he accidentally made her feel that she needed to use sex and emotional manipulation to protect herself from his possible violent retaliation.

This is still a deeply unpleasant situation, but it's so much better than the initial impression that I got!

CONCLUSIONS TIME

Talia healed Jason because

She's a kind and loving person, and was especially kind and loving when she was younger. She wants to help Bruce, she wants to help Jason, and she wants to help her father. She did it for love.

Talia kept Jason's existence a secret from Bruce because

Her father demanded she keep it a secret, then she was afraid Bruce would hate her for it, and by the time she ought to be warning Bruce about Jason, well he was a scary motherfucker and she was in too deep.

Is Talia portrayed as a sexually predatory monster?

No. A woman using sex to escape violence is not predatory; I will fucking fight you. That whole scenario was bad, but acting like she's evil for this doesn't pan out unless you disagree with some of the facts of the case. It also really doesn't feel like Winick intended for the audience to assume this was predatory. Jason never seems uncomfortable with the fact it happened, and he even gives Jason a bit of beard scruff to help convey that he's older now. (it uh... it didn't work. Because I thought Talia was like 52 at minimum. Also just the timeline. But that was the intent I feel)

Is Talia attempting to make Jason more vengeful?

No. Exact opposite actually, every lie and manipulation is in service of preventing him from going on his vengeance quest, guiding him to be a better person, and protecting herself and others.

As a side note: I haven't touched the potential misogyny or racism angles, because that's simply beyond the scope of this analysis. I don't have the time, energy, or resources to dig into this myself, you'll have to find a different post for that angle, sorry.

So... yeah. That's my findings, I hope at least one other person finds this useful!

#happy to report that Talia kissing Jason in Batman annual 25 was also something that was promptly retconned in Lost Days #probably because Winnick was playing with the idea of pairing Jason and Talia at the time but decided to #reallocate how and when that happens when writing the full details of Jason’s pre-Hood days #talia deserved better #talia al ghul meta #Jason Todd

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