I Don’t Know How To Love Things A Normal Amount.

You can now read my work "The son of Lazarus" on AO3

Tags: Damian Wayne centric, Magic user Damian Wayne, Good mother Talia al Ghul, Good Grandfather Ra's al Ghul

Ppl who draw Jason as a redhead… count your days.

Teuta Matoshi “Flourishing Meadow” and “Pastle Castle” gowns

The Psychology of Talia

For throwntotheair, who has a few questions about Talia. :) I’m grouping this under a few broad questions that should bleed into answering some of the others you mentioned.

The preface of this, of course, is that all of my answers are based in the character of Talia al Ghul prior to Grant Morrison writing her. So the 30+ years of content and development we had beforehand. Grant largely ignored the fundamental pieces of her character that were recurring themes over the years, turned her into an infanticidal rapist and, generally speaking, made her as 2-dimensional as possible. His interpretation also gave Talia wildly inconsistent motives, so he is not a good measure for delving into her character.

What are her motives?

Talia has always been motivated by one thing: love. Love for her father, love for Bruce, love for Damian. Even love for the planet (though less so than Ra’s). Each step of her journey has love somewhere in the why. The primary conflict for her, especially early on, was the tug-of-war between acting for good (because of her love for Bruce) or acting for evil (because of her love for her father). 

The animated series still gives one of the best summaries of Talia’s goals, too: she says that she believes in her father’s vision for the world, but not in his means (namely mass genocide). 

Even in dealing with Damian (Morrison, again, notwithstanding), I think she meant everything for love (I’ll explain more in the ‘why did she raise him this way’ section).

When she throws Jason into the Lazarus Pit in Lost Days, her letter to him says that she has done this “for love.”

Despite her badassery, Talia is actually a very loving, empathic person (though sometimes she denies it). Either way, love is at the core of what she does. For her father, that love spills over into loyalty…most of the time.

Why the loyalty to Ra’s (Why has she never stood against him?)

Wellllll this is two parts. The first question: love and indoctrination. The second question: she has.

First we have to understand that Talia is pretty much a psychological trainwreck. In Batman Chronicles #8, we see one of the only stories that’s specifically from Talia’s point-of-view. This and Lost Days are as close as we really get to such direct access to her thoughts.

Yeah. She’s messed up. We should note that Ra’s, despite his being just about Worst Dad Ever, does genuinely love Talia, in his own way.

Realize that Talia has been raised exclusively in Ra’s in environment (like Damian) and that the way she raised Damian was A LOT like she was raised. She’s in a place where he father is viewed as a deity, it’s this massive, powerful cult, and so there’s a level of indoctrination going on.

But that said…Even from the beginning, Talia was defying her father.

She thinks for herself and, growing through the years, she becomes increasingly agitated, worn down and plain ol’ fed up with her father. I would argue that in most cases, she betrays him for Bruce (or Jason, or Damian) because she knows he’s wrong.

(Prior this panel, Batman asks why Talia is betraying Ra’s, and if it’s because she loves him:)

Doesn’t she seem to be lacking independence?

Here’s where I think there was a massive missed opportunity. Talia, after being shot for betraying her father in Tower of Babel, nopes out and goes off on her own. She’s fed up with both Bruce AND Ra’s.

Ra’s shows up and has Talia kidnapped to bring her back. She winds up rescuing Bruce one more time before leaving BOTH of them and heading off to Hong Kong, where she becomes a successful businesswoman in her own right.

At the time, Lex Luthor is about to run for president. He shows up at her door:

Talia becomes CEO of LexCorp. I wish so much that more happened in this era for her. She butts heads with Superman a few times (and even teamed up once and it was awesome), but it was so under-utilized. In the end, though, she runs the long con on Luthor, willfully bankrupts LexCorp and sells off the assets to Wayne Enterprises. Mostly just to spite him.

She hates Lexcorp mostly because she’s an environmentalist. And because Luthor.

So she’s this awesome independent businesswoman who manages to trick one of the smartest men in the DCU.

Unfortunately, her half-sister shows up during this era in Death and the Maidens. She kidnaps and tortures Talia by murdering her over and over and bringing her back with her Lazarus Pit. This goes on until Talia’s psyche shatters.

Nyssa brainwashes Talia, first with intent to kill Ra’s. Ra’s eventually kills Talia.

When Nyssa kills Ra’s, she and Talia both continue with Ra’s mission (with Nyssa as the Demon’s Head until her death). Then Talia, still brainwashed, becomes the Demon’s Head and leads into the modern area (as with Villains United which ran pretty close up to the New 52).

Why did she raise Damian in that environment?

To put it short: because it was how she was raised and because she knows it’s the only way for him to survive. When Talia was 18 (her first appearance) she was kidnapped by an enemy of her father. Her entire life has been violence, danger and bloodshed. Her father is a powerful, dangerous man in a dangerous world.

If Damian had not been trained, in her mind, he would not have survived. I think she believes it was the best way for him to be able to protect himself. Some indoctrination bleeds through (as her raising him would be post-brainwashing, though the timeline is a bit wonky). 

I hope that helps! I’ve got a lot more essays in on my blog, plus one that’s a comprehensive account of Talia’s history.

How do I reblog something 8 million times

Hey Respawn, please stop this.

I’ve been playing Apex Legends pretty much since it came out. Took a long break on it and am finally back into now that it has crossplay but i’ve noticed something again that’s been irking me for a while now.

This.

Everything else about this skin is very nice except his hair. Not only is that shit..ugly but it’s also cultural appreciation.

As well as this,

Crypto is Korean if I’m remembering correctly and that skin is supposed to be the Hype Beast sort of style yeah. There is a PLETHORA of amazing hairstyles that are not only originally from South Korea but just in general and yet they chose a cornrow style...

I’m not even going to say anything about Wraith. Those look like grinch fingers not locks.

Now, listen. All this wouldn’t be so bad if Bangalore didn’t have the same hairstyle just in different lengths and colors for all her skins.

I love that Apex had a diverse set of characters pretty much from launch, I do! I was so excited to see that after months of playing OW and their “diverse” cast of characters. I love that they had two strong black(and incredibly attractive. Lookin at you bangalore.) women right off the bat but I don’t like seeing them waste their amazing stylistic potential by giving the all of the traditionally black hair styles to the non-black characters.

We want this:

Look at her! She looks amazing!

Not this:

No body wants to get an epic Victory Royale with rat tails on their head.

I take back what I said I can actually see how Talia and Battinson get together because that pathetic wet cat of a man is most definitely into people with more forceful personalities than him. He's a melodramatic mf and Talia is nothing if not a romantic so she has no issue keeping up with him. They angst about stuff together and then have dramatic fights across rooftops or gardens or something while proclaiming their "forbidden love" and calling each other nicknames that make everyone else gag. They write long, lengthy poems about each other's beauty and moral codes and the indescribable (they spend thirteen pages describing it) pull they feel towards each other and their forbidden attraction. The only difference is that Talia reads hers out to him lovingly and Battinson stutters through his, is beet red and can't look her in the eye. She thinks it's adorable. They're so in love it's sickening. They're literal Morticia and Gomez variants

P A R T Y  T I M E ! 

SORRY IVE BEEN GONE I GOT A JOB AND IVE VEEN SO BUSY TALIA HCS IN A MINUTE