#talia al Ghul deserved better

[redwiccanrobin]

*heavy sigh* Here we go again.

1. If Talia being a good mom is an oxymoron, then, I’m sorry, Bruce being a good dad is an oxymoron. Don’t get me wrong, I love me good daddy Bruce, but he’s training kids to be vigilantes and that’s inherently putting them in danger. You can’t be mad at Talia for not getting out of a situation (where she was indoctrinated, mind you) but turn a blind eye towards Bruce’s actions that are similar.

2. Clearly, you didn’t do your research. The first instance of Talia and Bruce having a child together was in Son of the Demon from 1987, not Batman & Son from 2005. In Son of the Demon, the consummation of their marriage that lead to Talia’s pregnancy was consensual.

3. Again, I’m taking it that you didn’t do your research because in Son of the Demon, Bruce was ecstatic about Talia being pregnant. She didn’t trick him into giving up his sperm, she just… had sex with her husband and got pregnant.

4. Bruce was a parent before Damian was ever born, so… I don’t get why you’re all huffy about him “not being asked if he wanted a child.” That motherfucker collects orphans like their Pokemon cards.

5. The events of Batman & Son are no longer canon and have not been for at least 10 years. In fact, I have the very panel that clearly states it as not canon!

This is from an issue of New 52’s Batman & Robin which ran from 2011-2015. I’m not great at math, but that’s 13 years of the SA storyline being out of canon, no?

Talia haters, do your research before you run your mouths and let go of the racist storyline that hasn’t been canon in at least a decade.

[rubydubydoo122]

Why is it that Batman’s ok with Antiheroes if it’s Catwoman or Talia Al Ghul, but when it’s the Red Hood, suddenly he’s beating the shit out of him

~Jason Peter Todd at some point

[cologona]

Jason and Talia both attempting to separate themselves from their fathers and both being forcibly chained back to them by love by the status quo by the fact that they don’t get to have their integrity matter.

[glitter-stained]

So much could be said about the depiction of mental illness (and chronic psychophobia and ableism in dc) but here are the sparknotes:

ACCORDING TO DC!!!:

> Some people (not all!) are born with a genetic factor which we will call gene X. Gene X has two possible variants: evil potential and hero potential. The X gene is dormant, and will only activate when environmental factors brutally shake the neural system, aka in highly traumatic situations. A person with the hero variant, upon being traumatized, may trigger a biopsychosocial chain reaction that will lead to them dressing up in unusual costumes and fighting crime, while a person with the villain variant, in the same situation, may go from a normal person to a crazy mass murderer in the laps of a day.

> The presence of the evil factor has been shown to be correlated with poverty, ethnicity (higher prevalence in non-caucasian populations), queer identity/sexuality, amongst other factors (which could mean nothing). Please note that this is not a causation, as traumatized people with these characters can still be bearers of the hero factor.

> Some researchers have theorised that the nature of trauma may play a role (though results are not yet conclusive across all data). Specifically, being upset/not able to get over trauma that hurt us specifically is associated with an increased risk of becoming a crazy evil mass murderer, while trauma associated with grief/watching other people get hurt is associated with heroism. This is probably because of the inherent weakness of getting hurt and selfishness of being upset about it, VS the inherent nobility of being upset about other people, especially your loved ones, getting hurt. Furthermore, amidst people who have trauma happen directly to their person, the evil and hero variants allow us to distinguish between two cohorts: the hero variants, who will either not complain about their trauma nor mention it or get over it in a manner that doesn't upset the established system too much, and the bad victims, who challenge the system that allowed them to get hurt instead of understanding that it was their fault, actually; these people also happen to be crazy murderers, so it's fine.

>A correlation has been shown between bearers of the X gene and a higher occurrence of trauma. In bearers of the evil variant, this is known as the "doomed from the start" effect, or "natural born killers".

>In extreme situations, there exists a risk of contamination from the evil variant: specifically, if someone with the X gene kills a particularly intense and virulant evil crazy mass murderer, this crazy murderer may release spores that will contaminate the killer's cells and turn their hero variant into an evil variant and activate it.

In conclusion: please talk to actual therapists and trauma specialists before writing about trauma and psychological disorders before your world building begins to look like that. And no, reading Freud does not count. (You should have stayed in school, Scotty.)

[gothamite-rambler]

Jason (singing, intense and emotional): I see your palace covered in red,

Faces of men who had long believed you're dead.

I see your wife with a man who is haunting,

A man with a trail of bodies.

Jason (speaking, shouting with raw anger): WHO?!

Jason (resuming singing perfectly, voice trembling with passion):

I see a song of past romance,

I see the sacrifice of man,

I see portrayals of betrayals

And a brother's final stand.

I see you on the brink of death, I see you draw your final breath,

I see a man who gets to make it home alive,

But it's no longer... you.

Stunned silence filled the room.

Jason (hands on his hips, doubtful and self-conscious about his singing): I was bad, wasn't I? I was pitchy at the end there.

Ra's (genuinely impressed, eyebrows raised): God damn. Bruce and Talia weren't kidding.

Talia (smirking, catching the nuance): The fact you didn't use your name for God means you're actually surprised.

Cass (warmly, with a gentle smile): Good job, Jason.

Bruce clapped earnestly, and soon everyone joined in with applause.

Damian (clapping with a nostalgic smile): I remember he used to sing me to sleep. You still got it, Jason.

Jason (dismissive, but with a hint of hope): You guys are lying. This was stupid. I don't know why you offered me to sing for a stupid scroll. I wasn't good.

Ra's (serious and respectful): Jason, that was genuinely very good. Do not have self-doubt; that makes you weak. I can't deny it, you left me shocked. Huh, fine. You guys can take the scroll. I've been proven wrong, and that means something.

Ra's handed Bruce the scroll.

Bruce (proud, with a warm smile): Good job, Jason.

Jason walked off, a shy smile playing on his lips, trying to hide his racing heart and newfound sense of appreciation.

[casscainmainly]

there's a good couple things about popular fanon that I really hate but the things that always sticks out to me is what they choose to keep from canon for instance, morrisions Talia Al Ghul, some fanon only fans who very proudly say they've never read a comic sure do love to bring up how Talia was portrayed in Morrisions batman run like they've actually even read it

God this is so real. Evil Talia enduring for so long is a testament to how most fanon demonises characters of colour to prop up White favs. Evil Talia exists to prop up Good Dad Bruce, and canon is a convenient excuse to justify that. (This is an issue for canon fans, too; there are some very ungenerous interpretations of characters based on 1 badly written moment or run).

But yeah for most popular fanon 'canon', it's either villainising a POC or victimizing a White boy. Fanon's love of Red Robin 2009 is a good example of this - it's the ultimate White boy victim/evil POC story. Of course it's not, because anyone who reads it knows that neither Tim or Damian are written as unilaterally right or wrong, but that nuance is lost in vague Tumblr posts and out-of-context screenshots.

Everyone picks and chooses canon, that's inevitable given the medium. But where most canon fans pick and choose based on characters they love, fanon seems to choose canon based on who they don't like/who to exclude. So you have Damian cutting Tim's line, the weird endurance of cop!Dick/the 'Tim and Arkham' thing, evil Talia, Cass being in HK... all of this canon centers on removing or villainising characters of colour.

Not all fanon fans are like this, a lot of them genuinely love these characters. But if your love of a White character is predicated on tearing down a character of colour, especially when you've never taken the time to understand anything about them, that's when it stops being harmless fun.

[vodrae]

DC Comics are keeping Nightwing and Talia Al-Ghul from being friend because the world wouldn't handle the amount of gatekeep gilrlboss gaslight .

I mean, who could beat an alliance of Batman's firstborn, manipulative sunshine, best fighter in the world and ninja princess ballerina Palpatine's daughter ?

[punkeropercyjackson]

Can we not make the guy who's a classical literature nerd and has neapolitan based things as his favorite food and was a happy go lucky softhearted theater kid in his Robin era and shows a strong aversion to traditionalist norms and killed two seperate sexual abusers at extremely different mindsets in his life and games with his siblings and openly shows his emotions regardless of nature and takes care of dogs and respects women to the point of considering them inherently better than men into a classless gooner who represses everything that dosen't involve sex or acting like a douchebag when he's potrayed as afrolatino just because he's masc and aggro.Can we not do that.

I'm so exhausted as a black dominicana of the way nonblack Batfanon stans do afrolatino Jason.You strip him of everything that makes him who he is so he can be your stereotype since those're the only black characters you want as black and the only way you can 'see' them as black.All you care about is that,not his heritage or his bond with Duke or Duke as his own character despite him being a black Batboy and Jason's Robin and Jason his Robin and him the only reason he rejoined the Batfam to boot

You cannot in good faith say you see Jason as afrolatino yet not give him his canon personality and i'm including the part where og Rhato was completely disregarding his 28 beforehand years of history to comply to the narrative he likes Roy and 'Kori' that is so loved by the fandom while ignoring his legit bond with Duke.I'm also including the part where he's never cared for Tim nor would he ever tell Damian his biomom and his adoptive mom noncanonically csa'd him as a 'joke'(and adults who tell kids sexual things to 'punish' them should blow their brains out).Jason is not your scary/token/dehumanized sexified black man.Jason is a favorite amongst black/latino/afrolatino DC fans and he's for us before he's for anyone else.We treat him better and know him better than you do

[metis-iphigenia]

yapping again because I can😼

personally i think if the writer was someone other than tom king, diana-damian team up would have been better.

the wonder woman comics were fun to read only if you act like its some kind of a fanfiction.

the only thing i liked from it was when they finally acknowledged the fact that being batman isn't the only path for damian(and they should considering damian doesn't even want to be the bat and cassandra cain is more suitable to carry the mantle)

what didn't make sense was making him batman in the future in the same comic. i don't know what was the intention. and frankly i don't care.

also as much as i loved damian and diana's conversation(the part where diana said "youre not batman nor do you have to be" and "dont forget im a child of god too" not the other parts they sucked) im confused on why damian is having this conversation with diana.

yes diana is a great character and personally damian and diana's personality could match eachother if written well but i dont think they are close enough to have a heart to heart conversation like this

also again with the talia thinking love is for fools/have inflicted that onto damian. its tom king writing so im not surprised but like cmon.

damian is like talia when it comes to love department. he loves like she does, with their whole heart.

anyway tom king never write damian nor the al ghul family again im tweaking rn

[sithexiles]

what a loser

[redwiccanrobin]

On that Talia hater

I suspect that they have never read a pre-Morrison comic. Or, if they have, they’ve gone in with preconceived notions. Or, they just have terrible media literacy. Here are my reasonings for these assumptions.

Take a look at this page from Son of the Demon, please.

Now, take a look at their description of this page. Though I warn you, it’s way too hostile.

Hmmmm…. Okay, where to even begin?

First, yes, Bruce didn’t get consent to marry Talia in the comic, I’ll give that to them. And if they find that weird or it makes them uncomfortable, fine. But, they’re blatantly ignoring a key factor in this reveal; Bruce’s reaction. He hesitated for a moment. He questioned the circumstances for a moment. But after that moment, he’s fine. In fact, he’s more than fine. Throughout the comic he’s shown being truly happy and in love. Sure, I’ll give it to them that it was pretty fucking strange that he didn’t get a say (what universe does the man not get a say??), but their insistence that this was traumatic for him is just not true.

Two, nowhere in the original comic that they’re referring to is Bruce drugged by Talia or Ra’s. That was something that Morrison added in their retelling. Something they added in because they didn’t bother rereading the comic and because they had racist and misogynistic biases that they did not work through before writing Talia. They admitted to both of these things. So, no, Talia has not been a rapist from the start. They are blatantly misreading the text to pat themselves on the back for hating her.

Three, no one defends Ivy or Tarantula? Yeah, I’m going to assume they haven’t been here long. When it comes to Tarantula, the writer herself downplayed the rape of Nightwing. She even said it “wasn’t rape” but rather “not consensual.” Maybe that’s not outright defense, but it’s pretty close to it. As for the fandom, there’s still an issue to this day of hyper-sexualizing Dick. As for Ivy? Yes, people defend her vehemently. If you look at the Talia tag on, say, TikTok vs the Poison Ivy tag it is night and day the way people view those characters. Ivy is seen as a feminist icon, a sapphic queen, a complex character. Talia doesn’t get that same treatment. People still cling to that racist characterization of her and refuse to let it go.

OP is most likely never going to see this, but if they do, I have a message for them. You don’t know me. You don’t know the things I have been through, which is a lot. You don’t get to pass judgment on me and question my morals over a fictional character I enjoy. A fictional character who hasn’t been a rapist in 10 years. Something you would know if you dared do a smidge of research. Have the day you deserve.

Note: if you find out who this person is, please do not go and harass them. If you come across them, I recommend just blocking. Especially if you’re pan/omni.

[martyrbat]

batman #333

[ID: three panels of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul over the course of a day. In the first one, Bruce has his cowl on but is sitting shirtless on their bed in the early dawn hours after getting severely injured on patrol the night before. Talia rushed to help him with his injuries as he started to talk about the burdens and trials of tomorrow—which caused Talia to caress his face and promise, “There will be time to worry of the future soon enough. But for now you must relax... You need comforting. I can give you all you need... And more.” Bruce admits, “Talia, you tempt me...”

In the second panel, it's the same day but they're dressed to go outside the ski resort they're taking refuge in. Talia is holding onto his arm as he was talking about the mission before he tells her, “But that's tomorrow. Tonight, well... First, dinner.” Talia smiles softly and prompts, “And then...?” Bruce responds, “Then we'll discuss that comforting you mentioned earlier.”

In the third panel, it's that night. They had dinner and dodged an assassination attempt, which caused Bruce to start to talk about the even bigger dangers that awaits them tomorrow. Talia gently tells him, “The moon is so beautiful, Bruce. Too beautiful to be wasted worrying.” They kiss in front of the moonlight and Talia reminds him, “We talked about comforting...” END ID]

[strawberrytalia]

Hmm between Talia faking a miscarriage because she was so hyperaware of the danger of her environment and what that could mean for her child, especially with Bruce throwing himself into even more danger for her…. and Dinah flat out telling Ollie she doesn’t want children because she can’t stand the thought of creating orphans in the event she and Ollie die, and choosing the hero lifestyle over children….

and then both of these women getting turned into mothers/mother figures for children who are closer to Bruce/Ollie anyways.

[tinky-dinky]

I did not just see a fic of a ‘loving’ relationship between Talia and Jason. Between a grown adult woman and the traumatised teenager she essentially kidnapped.

Fuck anyone that writes that shit. You are disgusting.

[icepandawarrior]

( @freedmarkus )

( @ftmbruce )

( @w0lfx )

( @raccooncitycafe )

( @tomkeirblyth )

( @yumr11 )

DAY 21: AAAAAND WE'RE BACK

[ruestheday]

before dc decided to make everyone's parents one dimensional to make bruce look better in comparison (my theory), batman was so good at showing the complexity of having your abuser be your parent.

i'll probably add more later, but here's my favorite examples

david cain loved cassandra. he loved that little girl, and he showed it by making her the perfect weapon. he showed it by the only way he knew how, making sure she was the best of the best and couldn't be defeated. he made sacrifices to do to so, like refusing to allow her to understand language, and it worked. he loved that little girl that he dressed in a pink dress and made sure to get her pigtails even and then he told that little girl to kill someone. and cassandra knows she was loved by him, even if that love was wrong and painful and not the kind she deserved.

talia al ghul loved damian. she loved her son so she trained him to fight men twice as large. she loved her son the only way she knew how, the only way her father loved her, so she trained him to kill. to defend himself. to do his duty as an al ghul. she loved him but she raised him in a cult, because the cult was all she knew. she loved him enough to let him go, to send him to his father. to stand up to her own father for him. and damian knows he is loved by her, even if was wrong and painful and not the kind he deserved.