#like i said i'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to talia's history in comics

[sohotthateveryonedied]

okay so you don't have to answer this publicly (because I'm kinda scared Talia fans will come after me if you do >__>) but I'm confused about something.

Why do I see so much of the fandom on here stan Talia? Like, I get people can stan who they want to obviously - no judgement there. But I've seen a lot of people play the race card like "y'all don't like her because she's a WOC" and they act like she's this great mom and some true love to Bruce and it feels like they're completely forgetting that she fucking drugged and RAPED Bruce and has tried to kill her son before.

Like... am I missing something??? Am I crazy??? I'm so confused. I know she was kick ass in the animated series and I liked her in that! But she fucking raped Bruce and people act like he should just get over it and be with her. I'm???? Like if the same thing happened to a female character, I assume these people would be outraged, right?? So is it a weird hypocrisy or am I missing something?

I'm not trying to attack anyone, I swear. I'm just really confused.

(please keep in mind that i haven't read many talia-centric comics aside from the resurrection of ra's al ghul, death and the maidens, robin: son of batman, etc so i'm only saying what i've gathered so far based on what other people have said. i don't have much actual authority on this since i'm not as knowledgeable of talia's character as others, so if anyone wants to add on to this post with any additional details or to correct anything i got wrong, please feel free to do so!!)

Okay so!! To answer your question simply, the reason there are so many Talia stans is mostly that she's an interesting character and they like her. It's the same reason people stan any character. Talia may be morally gray at times, but so are other characters like Deathstroke and Harley Quinn, and plenty of people like them for this reason. It's not rocket science.

In a more complicated explanation, the reason there is so much support for Talia is that her character got...pretty butchered over time? (Personally, I prefer her as an anti-hero of sorts because I find that more interesting to read, but not everyone sees it that way and that's perfectly fine because at this point there are so many different interpretations of Talia al Ghul that it's hard to determine what she's REALLY like right now in canon. Not to mention how she's depicted in other media like the animated movies and TV shows.)

Before the 2009-ish era (AKA before Grant Morrison got their hands on her) Talia wasn't the "evil rapist" people nowadays label her as. She loved Bruce and he loved her. Talia was loyal to her father, but over time her love for Bruce became more powerful than her loyalty to Ra's. This was a fairly major aspect of Talia's character—her love for Bruce vs her loyalty to her dad. She was ambitious and morally ambiguous, but she was also a romantic. And overall, she was a caring person with a good heart. This was how Talia al Ghul was presented to fans for over thirty years.

Batman #232

Detective Comics Annual #1

Talia and Bruce were even married for a while, though I'm not sure how much of a say Bruce had in that marriage? From what I've gathered, Bruce was drugged and forced into a marriage with Talia. Bruce didn't consider the marriage binding and kind of just...forgot about it, I guess?

DC Special Series Vol 1 #15

Then years later the Son of the Demon storyline happened and Bruce says "fuck it, let's be married" and he hangs out with the al Ghul's as Ra's' son-in-law and Talia's husband. That's when Bruce and Talia conceived Damian in the original canon. Bruce slept with Talia consensually and they conceived a baby together.

Batman: Son of the Demon

Soon after, Talia faked a miscarriage in order to "save" Bruce from losing his edge as Batman. She ended up having the child in secret and giving him up for adoption (until decades later when the kid will show up again as our favorite brat, Damian Wayne <3).

Batman: Son of the Demon

This is where Grant Morrison comes in. When Damian shows up again in Batman #655, changes are made to better "accommodate" the fact that Bruce and Talia's kid who was put up for adoption in 1987 is now ten years old and spent his whole life being raised by the League of Assassins. Morrison made some iffy changes to the situation, the most major one being that the tryst between Bruce and Talia was no longer consensual. Instead Morrison made it so that Talia drugged Bruce and had sex with him without his consent so that she could have his child. Yikes, yikes, yikes.

Batman #656

In reference to this decision, here is Morrison's justification in an interview with Wizard's Magazine:

“For a long time, [DC] said [Son of the Demon] was out of continuity. Now it's just kind of out of continuity. I didn't actually read it before I started writing this. I messed up a lot of details, like Batman wasn't drugged when he was having sex with Talia and it didn't take place in the desert. I was relying on shaky memories. But now we have this new "Superboy punch" continuity. People still don't realize how important that single punch was to cover everyone's ass.”

Personally, not taking into account the timeline-fuckery and uncertainty of what's canon and what isn't, I think this move was mostly for the purpose of making Talia a villain right from the get-go so Morrison could use her as an antagonist in future Damian storylines. In a way, this part (the antagonist role, not the rape) makes sense, since Talia has been falling more towards the "bad guy" side of the scale at this point in time. This is due to the 2004 storyline, Death and the Maidens.

Death and the Maidens is what I interpret as the start of Talia's "bad guy" phase, which makes sense, considering that she was killed and dumped into the Lazarus Pit by her sister Nyssa like a million times in one day. Nyssa did this with the intention to torture and brainwash her sister into a weapon to use against Ra's. By the end of all this torture, Talia is now a hardened enemy of both Ra's al Ghul and Batman.

Death and the Maidens #5

Personally, I think it would have been better to leave the Son of the Demon storyline intact instead of rewriting Talia's character completely. Death and the Maidens was the turning point for her; it makes no sense to go back forty years and paint her as a villain right from the start when not only is it unfair to her character, but it just...doesn't make sense? If DC wants to see Talia as an antagonist for a bit, that's fine, but just work with what you already have instead of turning her into a crazy rapist? It's bad writing, plain and simple.

Anyway, that's why people are generally against the whole "Talia raped Bruce" narrative since it was a retcon anyway and an incredibly bad one at that.

As for why people love Talia...I mean, she is super cool and badass. Also she's a total MILF, so I can definitely see the appeal.

Batman (2016) #33

Batman (2016) #34

[baticorngirl]

In honor of the new issue, I'm gonna add on a bit to this theory of mine about who Mother Soul is. Just some smaller details I noticed both in the issue 6, and when looking back at previous ones later on.

I know some people would probably put this in a reblog, but the original post wasn't showing up in the tags very well so I've gotta try again.

Anyway, spoilers for Robin, obviously. And some for Batman: Birth of the Demon, too.

First of all, let's start back with issue #4. The fact that Ra's used the word buried, out of all words.... and the fact that it's in italics? Well, I already covered in my last post that Ra's LITERALLY BURIED THE STATUE OF THEIR DEMON so it feels pretty fitting.

Next of all, this assassin talks about appreciating Mother Soul's respect for history, which is literally what this theory says is one of her biggest motives. Her people, and their entire history/past, was erased by Ra's as revenge. Actually, when Ra's was doing that, someone said something extremely similar to this quote:

Oh, and the book is probably the records Ra's burned:

Or maybe even the story Huwe writes later on. Or even some unmentioned codes to the city's main religion. I'm not sure, but there are definitely a lot of possible answers.

Okay, now on to issue 5:

There's not a ton there, but...

That city was old!

And it's kinda funny, the salimb did seem convinced that the Lazarus Pit was magic, not science, and overall seemed like he believed in magic a lot more than science, lol. Probably not important, though.

The magic has probably evolved a lot more, anyway, because the magic they use in Robin definitely didn't show up in Batman: Birth of the Demon.

Oh, and this issue has a nice closeup of the demon symbol. It definitely doesn't look exactly like the one in Birth of the Demon, but there are some similarities- sharp teeth, pointing things come out from the head/back, something similar coming out of the jaw....

and quite a lot of swirl marks on both of them. Interesting. They've had 500+ years of evolution, so when you factor that in... really could be a lot more different.

Well, excluding the parts I already covered in my first post, that's it for that issue.

Now, on to the most recent one!

First of all, there's a lot of talk about how complex what's going on is, which obviously is true for this theory.

But there's also some stuff regarding specific moments, of course.

The book is written in its own special characters/alphabet, which is also true for the city's language. Unfortunately, I'm near the photo-limit on tumblr, though, so you've just kinda just gotta trust me on this one. When Ra's discovers Huwe writing his auto-biography, he says the following:

"It is bad enough that you write in these characters, in this language..."

So yes, they had special characters.

Okay, I only have one place to add a photo left, so here it is:

First of all, Damian just confirms what I already said-- the book is written in its own kind of markings/language.

Second of all, Damian is able to discover who Mother Soul is just by reading the book, and he seems to actually have a bit of background knowledge on it. That makes sense, considering in The Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul, Talia tells him Ra's' origin story (yet again, I would show a screenshot, but tumblr won't let me).

That's pretty much it!

You may have noticed that this post was much more casual and randomly-worded than the first one. I'm tired, lol.

But it sounds like in the next issue, Mother Soul's identity will be revealed! Obviously, there are still some minor details that don't 100% match up with this theory, but I'm still hopeful for the chance that at least part of it could be true!

Anyway, guess we'll just have to wait and see!

[wesavegotham]

Talia, Damian and choosing between good and evil

Before Grant Morrison created Damian in 2006 Talia was seen as one of Bruce's greatest loves for a long time. She was the first love interest of Bruce that showed him from a more passionate side:

Bruce and Talia loved each other, but Talia could never really choose between her loyalty to her father and her love for Bruce, even though in most stories she would end up helping Bruce against Ra's.

While she was morally gray, Talia was originally a kind character, who fought against child rapists, murderes and other villains, patched Bruce up when he was hurt or down and even threw herself between Bruce and bullets that were about to hit him. In the 1987 graphic novel "Son of the demon" the two even married and Talia got pregnant. Bruce went pretty much overboard trying to keep Talia and their unborn child safe and almost got himself killed in the process. Which is why Talia lied to him about suffering from a miscarriage and asked him to leave her. Later she gave birth to their unnamed son and gave him to an orphanage:

The graphic novel was later taken out of continuity because DC didn't like the implication of Bruce having sex and not knowing that he had a child when he's supposed to be the world's greatest detective.

The reason I'm mentioning this story is because it would later serve as the base for Damian's creation in 2006. While the idea of Bruce and Talia having a child came up in Elseworld stories before (Ibn in "Kingdom Come" and Tallant Wayne in "Batman: League of the Batmen") the introduction of Damian marked the first time their son became canon in the main DC universe.

When Grant Morrison started his run on Batman he decided to bring "Son of the demon" back into continuity, but didn't bother to read the graphic novel he only vaguely remembered. His vague memory ended up basically destroying Talia's original character, something she hasn't recovered from since 2006.

In his memory they didn't have a consensual relationship and Talia raped Bruce to have a child. Morrison reduced her to the "Asian Babymama" trope and turned her into a mustache twirling villain, a worse version of Ra's basically, who turned evil because Bruce rejected her. Suddenly she was willing to sacrifice both Bruce and Damian to reach her goal of ruling the world. I have a lot of issues with this premise, most importantly its racist and sexist undertones, but this post wouldn't end if I started ranting and there are fans who are more knowledgeable about Talia and better at explaining why this sucks so much.

Grant Morrison later admitted that he remembered the story wrong and tried to explain that Talia went evil because of the continuity changes Superboy Prime punching the universe caused (Don't ask, comics are weird) and that when Bruce accused Talia of drugging him Bruce was actually lying about getting drugged, because he didn't want to admit to himself that he had loved her and slept with her out of his own volition.

If you don't believe me, here is the link to the interview: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/hotb/2016/11/15/064-the-zorro-of-arkham--an-interview-with-grant-morrison

Think what you will about that explanation. Fact is, the last time Bruce commented on Damian's conception he said this:

So to all the people who love to yell that Talia is a rapist and Damian a rape-baby, kindly shut up. Morrison's mistake got retconned years ago.

Anyway, Damian inherited Talia's struggle to choose between Ra's and Bruce, only that they turned Talia into a second Ra's and gave all her previous conflicts to her son, which is probably one of the reasons DC is unwilling to return her to her former character.

Some writers like Patrick Gleason have tried to give her some redemption, like when he wrote that Talia had been posessed during Morrison's run and cleansed during her resurrection, but the rest of DC pretty much ignored his attempt.

I'm not a fan of DC's extremely black and white, good and evil narrative they have created for Damian and the execution is pretty lackluster.

First of all, it's pretty racist that the Al-Ghuls lost a lot of their complexity over the years to serve as Damian's dark and evil side of the family, while the batfamily (which is pretty white) is presented as the light and good side. It gives me major "white saviour" vibes and has lots of unfortunate implications, especially because DC likes to pretend that Damian is white and only touches his arab/chinese roots when they write him in a more negative light. DC does the same thing with Talia, where they draw her as white when she's more sympathetic and give her brown skin when she's evil.

Second of all, DC loves to label Bruce as a man of high morality, but I think he's actually a pretty bad hero and parent. Some part of me is convinced Talia isn't allowed to be a better mother because it would make Bruce look bad in comparison.

I talked enough about why I don't think of modern Batman as a good person and a hero in my previous post, so I'm going to focus on Talia and Ra's Al-Ghul.

Making Talia evil robs her of her character and history, erases one of Bruce's most important romantic relationships and after a while it just lacks story potential. If the Al-Ghuls have no redeeming qualities then writing Damian struggling so much between the two sides becomes baffling after a going through this character arc several times.

You can argue that Damian got gaslighted for years and that he was still an impressionable child, but if the Al-Ghuls are really as evil, brutal and selfish as DC writes them nowadays it makes it really hard to sympathize with anyone who thinks about joining them (which happens a lot with the batfamily).

Another fact that DC loves to forget is that originally Ra's used to be an eco-terrorist. He planned to wipe out some part of the human population to save plants and animals from extinction, which is extremely relevant today. Ra's is a villain, we don't have to argue about that, but he used to have more depth that made him interesting as a character and made it more plausible why someone might join him. He also loved his daughter, which explained why Talia struggled to leave him in her old stories.

The way they are written now it makes little sense why Bruce should have so much respect for Ra's, something that made their relationship special, there is no reason why Bruce ever loved Talia and decided to sleep with her and there's no reason why Damian should ever return to the League.

Establishing a more loving relationship, both between Bruce and Talia, even if it's in the past, and a better relationship between Damian and Talia has a lot more story potential for Damian's seemingly never ending storyline where he can't decide if he wants to follow Bruce's methods (whatever that means for modern Batman) or the way of his mother. Because as it stands his character developement is stuck in a loop where he just looks like a boy who is unable to learn and can't see how one of the possible options has nothing going for it.