gothamdetected-a

[gothamdetected-a]

found the only gif ill ever need again

[gothamdetected-a]

bruce wayne: the lost years

a vital part of bruce, and something that keeps every good interviewer on their toes for life when dealing with mr wayne, is the 8 years missing between the ages of 21 & 29 when, for all intents and purpose, bruce wayne fell off the face of the earth. this is a man who has spent his entire life in the public eye, only aided by his parents death, and yet for almost a decade he completely disappeared, no trace whatsoever, and even now, years after his heralded return to gotham, that period remains a mystery. bruce wayne does not talk about it, never lets anything slip about it, acts as though those years simply did not occur, and of course speculation runs rife - rumors of kidnapping, tales of being locked in a mental institution, none of them true. 

so what did happen? 

im adding “able to make hurried newspaper mock ups” to the skills on my cv.

at 21 years old, bruce wayne graduates from yale with a first in epe (economy, politics and ethics) and finds himself, at long last, out of the thumb of the wayne enterprises board who have been “guiding” (a polite word for pressganging) him into various schools, colleges and courses, shaping him to become the ceo that they want - a young, easily manipulated man who looks good on the front pages, and will do what they say, no questions asked. bruce is not that man. he has been downplaying his intelligence for years, partly as a way to fit into school, and partly due to his apathy at wanting to excel without his parents there to see. however it has the unexpected side effect of the board completely underestimating him, which later proves to be incredibly useful. when the wayne ent board expect him to step up and become the figurehead/scapegoat for the company, bruce instead, 7 months after graduating, disappears. one of the last times he is seen is at the wayne foundation winter gala, on january the 18th, and then he simply seems to vanish. the initial consensus is that he has overdosed/drunken crashed or injured himself, and that in a few days, the body of the wayne heir will be found and the family tragedy will be complete.

weeks go by and no one finds anything. there is hide nor hair of bruce wayne, despite the thousands of reports that roll in saying he has been seen in everywhere from the versace store on grand avenue to an opium den in marrakesh. during this period, bruce, who is clever and exceedingly wealthy and has been teaching himself to create disguises for the last 8 months, boards a plane to taiwan under the name robert jenkins, with $50 in his pocket and a change of underwear. alfred watches the flight take off, and is the last person to see “bruce wayne” alive for 8 years. 

sim, i hear you say, why in christs name would bruce want to do that? 

quite simply - he wanted to change the world. 

this is a young man who has been sitting on the rage and anger of his parents death for more than a decade, who has seen and continues to see the injustices and corrupt nature of humanity, and he wants to do something about it. anything. he can’t bring himself to sit in a boardroom in an ivory tower when there are people just like his parents dying out there. even if he can save one other life, make sure another child doesnt have to grow up like him, he believes that its worth it. he can’t do that in gotham (yet), as he’s too recognisable, doesn’t have the skills, doesn’t know yet how to go up against the entirety of the board and the breadth of dishonest government officials etc, but what he can do is follow the underhand wayne ent dealings and the leaked technology and try to stop his parents company from being used to subdue and overpower some of the poorest people in the world. to become a faceless hero to people who have never even heard the name “wayne”. bruce boards that plane fully intending to give his life in order to save a few others, and he almost succeeds. 

is this a completely foolish endeavour with undertones of white saviour complex? yes. however he goes with good intent, as an idealistic person who truly believes he can make a large scale positive impact, fuelled by his righteous fury. that doesn’t last long. he really has been shielded from many of the horrors of the world, and its not until he actually gets out there and has his eyes opened, that bruce realises the scale of human suffering, and just how stupid it was of him to believe he was going to prevent any new “bruce waynes” from being created, when theyre happening literally every minute. but he can do something, and sets his sights on taking down the triad crime syndicate, because a) somehow theyre involved with siphoning wayne money and warfare tech and therefore bruce feels responsible for those they are hurting and b) he can never do anything by halves. so he starts where the money trail is, stealing to get by, working his way up to infiltrating them, starts to understand exactly what is means to be a criminal, how many of them are just desperate people driven by circumstance, much like how he now is. he makes his way into their ranks, and then, because he’s sloppy and inexperienced, he gets caught out. they realise he’s bruce wayne, the man whose name is on all the shipment boxes, and decide that they can milk a pretty penny out of him from the board execs, but not without roughing him up first and asking him why hes there, what hes doing, who hes working for. the more unsatisfactory answers he gives, the worse the torture gets, and by the time he manages to escape, he really is on death’s door. 8 months after he left america, bruce finds himself dying in the back room of a macau chop shop, infection setting into his wounds, and delirious with fever.

this is when the league find him.

they have been watching the triads, waiting to find a weakness that will allow them to drive the syndicate back and reclaim more turf in east asia, and instead they find a half dead bruce wayne who thought he could take down one of the oldest secret societies & crime syndicates of the world, completely alone. his ambition interests them, and they decide to take him in. they bring him to their nepalese “monastery” and leave him there. if he dies, its no skin off their back, if he lives, they will test him to see if he is trainable. bruce, being a tenacious bastard, doesn’t die despite the league’s idea of medical treatment being “stick him near a fire and wait 2 weeks”, and when he’s healed enough, completes the series of gruelling physical and mental challenges that allow him entry to the league’s most base levels and to begin training. this is when the league begins to manipulate him – they tell bruce they wish to change the world, make it a better place, feed him with the ideals that he wants to hear. they do not tell him how they change the world, the brutal murders that occur, the consistent goal of a global scale purge of those deemed unworthy. and, beyond this, bruce doesn’t want to see. the league are the first people to listen to him, that are willing to show him how to tackle “evil”, able to show him how to curb his anger, and he wilfully ignores some of the ruh roh signs in favour of begging them to train him. he is told half-truths, and, believing these and that the league will give him the skills he has always wanted to be able to fight crime, bruce begins a very different sort of education.

to say that it is ruthless would be a massive understatement.

the league instils over a hundred types of martial arts into the recruits, teaches them the arts of stealth, disguise, marksmanship, subterfuge, swordsmanship, theatricality, escapology, intimidation, ambush, poison and deception. they hone the senses, shape the body into a weapon, they are the shadows, appearing and disappearing at a moments notice, able to use their environment perfectly to aid their fight. they are trained to be predators, to hunt their prey, track them down, and to completely master their emotions, to become dispassionate killers unaffected by their actions. but they are also the “fangs protecting the demon’s head” and therefore moulded into fanatical worshippers of ra’s al ghul.

some of the training is very obviously designed to push the recruits to the limit – they spend days being tortured, water boarded, burned with iron pokers, starved, beaten, whipped. some of it is less obvious, psychological – everyone is stripped of their name and their past. recruits live in silence. they are made to sleep on bare rock and are woken regularly after very little sleep for training. waking up often involves being sluiced with ice cold water, which is also the only water they are allowed to wash themselves with. sometimes they are made to sit in the glacier meltwater until hypothermia sets in, and at other times are left in the furnace rooms until they are hallucinating from dehydration. nudity is often forced, during torture training, during sparring, during the physical assaults on them from the elements. survival training involves being abandoned in the mongolian desert, the himalayan mountains, the vietnamese jungle, the middle of the south china sea on a floating plank of wood, and being told to find their way back to the monastery. many do not make it. many flee and are disposed of. food is incredibly restricted, and they are told to be grateful for what mouldy scraps they do receive. there are days where they are blasted with white noise 24/7 and others where they are made to exist in such perfect silence that it is equally as maddening. time is unknown to them – there are no days or weeks to count, and training often happens in endlessly dark rooms, with no sunlight, no one can say how long they have been there. training occurs until they collapse, gruelling feats of gymnastics and repetitive martial arts sequences and fights with each other where the winner is the last one to yield, regardless of how much blood is drawn or how many bones are broken. no weapon is off limits. giving in, slowing down or showing weakness only means more pain and therefore they are made to fight past the limits of their stamina. drugging occurs both with and without consent, and sometimes they are woken up with the world spinning and tasting colours, made to fight each other while under the effects, whilst sleep deprived, while the world is dark and cold and unforgiving. their senses are often restricted, made to feel their way through the world blind or deaf, made to fight like this. when they show emotion, they are beaten, and when they disobey, they are placed into isolation, with no food or nourishment of any kind beyond the dripping of meltwater down the ice walls of the cramped glacier caves theyre trapped into. bruce watches the people he came in with drop like flies, collapse in the middle of an endless competition, literally almost die from the training. he survives, but will carry the mental scars of this experience for the rest of his life. there is purposeful intent to break the trainees.

of course this is done under the pretence of making them able to withstand life as an assassin, the possibility of capture and torture, the likelihood of ending up in places where comfort is minimal, of keeping them on their toes, sharp and alert, and to an extent this is true. however it is also done with the intention of controlling and reshaping these men and women. the league do not want individuals who can think for themselves, who might rebel, they want perfect soldiers, who will follow orders without question, and sacrifice themselves in a heartbeat for the league. they want only the best of the best, those who can perform incredible feats and push past the seeming restrictions of the human body. this is when bruce begins to stand out. not for his physical prowess, although it isnt unnoteworthy. it’s that nothing they seem to do to him can break him. despite everything they put him through, and him especially due to his defiance, he clings to the one thought driving this, the thought that can not be taken away from him, the thought that keeps him focused and pushing onwards and past what he once thought were the limits of his endurance – his parents. that night in the alleyway. his mother’s blood on his hands. no matter what they do, bruce remains fierce and challenging and refuses to be bent to the league’s will the same as the other trainees.

so they try a different tack with him, and when he “graduates” from recruit to foot soldier, they make him management. this is when bruce meets ra’s for the first time. this is not the first time ra’s has met bruce, however. he has become keenly interested in this talented young man who is ferocious in his training, watching him for a year while bruce is unconscious, drugged or asleep, and has begun to believe that maybe, just maybe, bruce is the worthy successor that ra’s has been looking for, for like … 2 centuries by this point. around this time bruce is both introduced to talia, and legally declared dead in the states. the board have rushed it through, despite the continuing rumours that bruce is alive and lack of evidence, as they want to seize control of his majority share in the company and continue running wayne ent into the ground. bruce takes the role of sensei to the newest recruits and is made to pass the training down on to the next gen, which also shields him from going on “assignment” for the league and seeing exactly what they’re up to when they say they’re making the world a better place. ra’s and bruce become very close, initially in a mentor & student like role, and eventually in more of a father & son dynamic, with ra’s actually calling bruce family and inviting him to live in the al ghul quarters etc. ra’s also takes this opportunity to begin manipulating talia and bruce into a relationship, with the intent of securing his bloodline into his successor. yes that is a fancy way of me saying he wants them to have a baby, combining the wayne and al-ghul genes. for a few years it is actually … i mean i won’t say pleasant because life with the league is never pleasant, but at least peaceful. ra’s literally considers talia and bruce to be married (as apparently only his consent is needed for this to be law) and therefore treats him as a son, as the son he always wanted but never had. bruce teaches recruits and continues training under ra’s himself, he and talia “fall in love” as much as two people who have been brainwashed and manipulated can be, and all’s right with the world.  

then ra’s deems bruce ready for ascension, to become the new demon’s head, and everything goes to shit.

because of course, the league aren’t actually sunshine and rainbows, and they kill people and are aiming for mass genocide eventually, and therefore bruce’s final task, to prove he is ready, is to kill. and this man, who for the last 8 years has only survived due to clinging to the memory of his dead parents and the sheer need to do right and change the world, obviously refuses. he has seen criminals and knows that killing them is not going to solve anything, and actually makes you worse than them. he sees now too that the league are not just killing criminals, they are killing anyone they deem necessary to remove in order to angle themselves for a greater position of power – the only reason they were interested in the triads was to take over their position, not to actually aid those who suffer underneath them. and bruce turns around, to the man who has saved him and trained him and treated him like family, and he refuses to kill. the league policy on those assassins who fail or disobey orders, is to kill them in return, which is what ra’s attempts to do. they fight, and bruce badly wounds ra’s, thinking he’s killed him, and flees, believing he’s become just as bad as ra’s and has given in after all, but not without burning down most of the league complex first and leaving them in complete disarray.

of course we know that ra’s climbs into the lazarus pit and builds the league back up, but bruce doesn’t know that. the no-kill rule is now cemented firmly in place. he will not become what ra’s wanted him to be.

there is a month where he wanders aimlessly, tracking down several of the league’s alumni or contractors, such as henri ducard, and begging them to train him, but when it becomes obvious that a) they’re all amoral assholes and b) bruce is desperately looking to fill the weird slightly-more-than-just-a-mentor hole that ra’s has left in him, he gives up and returns to gotham, beginning to plan a way to become that faceless hero that can stem the rising tide of corruption that has been gripping the city ever since his parents passing. 8 year to the day since he abandoned gotham, bruce wayne strolls into the atrium of wayne towers and announces that he’s very much not dead and very much will be taking back control of his parents company. 6 months after that, the bat debuts in the city, delivering carmine falcone and his entire operation to the steps of the gcpd. falcone walks, but the rumor mill has already begun to churn, and already criminals are running scared. 

but the bruce wayne that steps off of the plane steps back on to american soil is distinctly not the one who stepped on it. there are physical scars, absolutely, but mainly the changes are mental – there is no rash behaviour, lashing anger, that is all driven away, controlled to the point of it being dangerous. he no longer eats or sleeps properly, is on high alert at all hours. needless to say he may have left the league, but the league did not leave him, and they have fundamentally changed bruce wayne, even if they could not break him and make him into a carbon copy like the rest of the soldiers. this is partly why the brucie wayne persona becomes so important – even to most people it would be obvious that he has undergone severe mental trauma and conditioning, but especially to those who once knew him and were close to him, the change is stark. the only person who knows and he confides in is alfred, and even then, it takes time and comes in pieces, stuttered half conversations about what he went through and how normal it seemed at the time. so the brucie persona is adopted, partly as a way to cover what will become his night job, and throw people off the potential scent that bruce wayne could be batman, but partly as a way to hide just how little of bruce wayne is actually left. the league gave him the abilities to do remarkable things and push his body and mind way beyond that of a normal human, but have only built on the trauma of his parents death and left him feeling broken, unable to think and feel and act as your average playboy ceo, or even just average joe, would without adopting a whole new personality, one that he feels incredibly detached from. and obviously this withdrawn, distrustful man that the league have left behind, is what influences all of his later relationships, with alfred, with his children, with the league and his friends. 

[gothamdetected-a]

the wayne ent board. 

as a small addendum to the previous meta, i want to say, and yes this is partially stolen from nolanverse, that the wayne ent board between the waynes death and bruce’s return to gotham and seizing of the throne, are a bag of dicks. bruce realises they are criminals, albeit “legal” ones, and that people like joe chill act out of a desperation caused by the perpetual poverty, bad healthcare (especially mental) and lack of jobs that are furthered by people like the WE board for their own gain. when they say theyre going to redevelop the city, but its not a “we want to continue the wayne legacy of helping the city” and is instead more of a “gentrify areas, push the poor people out of their homes, lets make lots of money through real estate and construction”. bruce hates corrupt politicians, government officials and rich industrialists who hoard wealth far beyond what they need, as much, if not more, than the criminals who steal and kill, and it takes him becoming a “criminal” himself to see that. when he comes back and sees what the board and other fat cats like them are doing to his parents company and the city itself, he starts a war as much on them as on any other kind of corruption, and the brucie wayne persona comes in serious use for this. in the same way that bruce wayne can’t leap into the docks to free a bunch of girls being illegally trafficked into the us to work as sex slaves, batman cant necessarily punch the board execs into submission. it’s why both sides of him are so necessary, and its partly why bruce wayne absolutely goes full himbo mode when he does come back to gotham. as an idiot with no business sense, he can get away with donating vast sums of money and rediverting profits back into the city, as well as maintaining the perfect cover that no one that stupid and vapid could possibly be the batman. bruce wanders into the board room of WE and goes “ooh i get to be the ceo! wow we have so much money we can give some of this away right? lets build a hospital, its what mommy and daddy would have wanted!” and the board have to grit their teeth and nod, without realising that it is extremely strategic. 

[gothamdetected-a]

sleep.

bruce does not sleep well. since the Event he has suffered from nightmares, and rarely sleeps peacefully. after the training with the league it is almost impossible for him to sleep soundly and consistently, and he becomes much more accustomed to small, hour long naps, when he can. he wakes far too easily at any noise or light, and never truly reaches rem sleep. he no longer has as many nightmares, but at the expense of ever actually being able to rest properly. he also gets up each day and goes into the WE office, at a reasonable time, if not on time, somewhere between half nine and half eleven in the morning, depending on when patrol ended, and does not sleep in, simply because he is unable to. his mind is constantly churning, body on high alert, and he has been trained not to need the sleep, and therefore gets up and heads into work regardless of whether hes only dragged himself into the cave 3 hours before or not. his lateness is always attributed to bruce wayne’s playboy/party lifestyle, as are the dark eyes and often hangover-esque symptoms - no one is going to realise that him wincing is from cracked ribs and not a red wine induced migraine. bruce does drink coffee, however not copious amounts of it, like some family members we know, and tends to have it at all the wrong times, when it is probably detrimental to a sleep pattern, rather than aiding it, for example, when he gets in after patrol, even though those are the precious few hours he should be using to fall unconscious. bruce often stays awake for days at a time, either by forcing himself or due to something triggering his memories of the league when they were trained to stay awake, and the longest he has gone is 5 days, at which point alfred literally drugged him and forced him to rest. bruce sleeps better in confined spaces, another hang over from his league training, and gets his best nights of sleep when he passes out in the cot in the cave. 

[gothamdetected-a]

then the 𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐃 said to cain, ❛ why are you angry? why is your face downcast? if you do what is right, will you not be accepted? but if you do not do what is right, 𝐒𝐈𝐍 is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.  ❜ 

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐋𝐒   ››   cain & abel / the duality of man

sacrifice. a struggle. the endless battle between right and wrong. the ground opens beneath them, its gaping terrible maw, and swallows. blood seeps into the soil. one of them has died —— both of them have DIED. a litany falls from bruised lips.   i wont kill you, but i dont have to save you either

god kills indiscriminately, with a dispassionate hand. violence, jealous, shame. they were once brothers, two stitches bound in the same thread, morality intertwined and discarded. they fight, they die, they are resurrected. god is unjust, sympathy is divine, unwarranted.   

but who is CAIN and who is ABEL 

the 𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐃 said, ❛  what have you done? listen! your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. now you are under a 𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐒𝐄 and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.  ❜

[gothamdetected-a]

sports teams. 

so gotham, being a big old city, is home to several sports teams, but dc, being dc, aren’t ever really able to make up their minds about who’s called what and its all kind of fallen into a crummy mess of timelines and continuities. so, just from my standpoint, through a mixture of canons, here’s each of the main teams & a little blurb :)

𝐆𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐌 𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐆𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐒     (   basketball  )

a fairly successful team, noteworthy for winning the 2002 NBA title. they play in yellow with black lettering, and is owned and managed by successful gotham businessman, theodore galavan. galavan gave bruce wayne a permanent centercourt skybox, but due to his disinterest in sports, the box is mostly known  for either having tickets to major games auctioned off, with the proceeds donated, or for being occupied by charitable organisations, particularly to allow children the opportunity to watch a game from it. 

𝐆𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐌 𝐊𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒     (   baseball  )

established in 1946 as a member of the american league, the knights have played most world series and have built up a “friendly” rivalry with the star city stars, ever since the two teams clashed at the 1976 october classic. their stadium is located on tricorner island, and was refurbished in the 90s by the wayne foundation, after a city-wide push to revitalise sports and encourage healthier living in the populace.

𝐆𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐌 𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐒     (   football  )

the gotham goliaths are best known for their long and continuing feud with the metropolis meteors, and even with friendly games between the two, the fans get exceptionally heated, no matter which city they’re playing in. their team colours mimic batman, with dark grey/black jerseys that sport gold numbering, and their stadium was moved out of the main city into the gotham county mainland, due to the increasing threats taking place whenever games would play.

𝐆𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐌 𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄𝐒     (   ice hockey  )

despite being gotham’s least successful sports team, so much so that it has become a running joke, true gothamites still turn out in force for the matches. many canadian teams, such as the quebec royals, come down to gotham to use the rogues as target practice out of competition season. 

𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐎𝐑 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐆𝐔𝐄𝐒

gotham guardsmen (basketball)

gotham gators (basketball)

gotham griffins (baseball)

gotham wildcats (football) 

gotham university nighthawks (football)

[gothamdetected-a]

cold cases.

something i think dc dont utilise enough when talking about bruce is the fact he is supposed to be “the worlds greatest detective”, or at least somewhere close to that, employing deductive reasoning with uncanny skill. very often he is reduced to a punchy kind of hero and not an intellectual kind of hero, and even when we are shown his ability to solve problems, it is often either through strategy or during an “active” case - as in, he’s literally just turned up on the scene. 

i like to think that, when given the time, when he isnt doing paperwork for wayne ent or its billon charities, when he isnt assessing stats and figures, when he isnt out on patrol or asleep, one of bruce’s “hobbies” is solving cold cases. he has access to a lot of case files & their data through the batcomp and its links to the gcpd database, and gordon often gives him leeway on any physical evidence, as long as he tests it within the confines of the gcpd building, which also leads to the department getting some very high-tech forensic equipment being installed courtesy of WE. theres about a 50/50 chance that if you find him sitting in the cave at the batcomp, instead of fiddling with prototypes or the car, he’s toying with an old “unsolvable” case. they do good for the city, taking criminals off the streets, bringing closure to affected families, but theyre equally good as something to occupy his mind when things are sluggish on patrol and most of the rogues are keeping quiet/planning something/actually in arkham for more than 5 seconds. he doesnt get to as many as he wants to, due to his attention being split in about 3 million directions at once, but he does steadily plough through the stack at the gcpd, and lets them tick over in his subconscious even when he doesnt have the time to actively devote to them. 

batman never receives any accolades for them, despite jim’s insistence, and gotham county ends up having one of the lowest number of open cold cases on the eastern seaboard. 

[gothamdetected-a]

no offence but im fucking hilarious 

[gothamdetected-a]

                              𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐏𝐄𝐎𝐏𝐋𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐆𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐌

                                                    decowled by sim 

[gothamdetected-a]

Keep reading

[gothamdetected-a]

talia al-ghul.

there are lots of conflicting versions of talia and depending on which dc writer gets their grubby little paws on her she can be anywhere from helpful anti-hero to genocidal maniac, so i just wanted to write something about how i see her. obviously if this clashes with peoples headcanons then this is super adaptable and i’m really chill about the whole thing, but just from my lil point of view this is the narrative i’ve stitched together for her. this is multi-canon AND canon divergent AND just my own opinions so. hate on it if you must but i ain’t even worried about it bro.

point the first: talia has been manipulated her whole life by ra’s al ghul

talia is like, one of the greatest cases for nature vs nurture ive ever seen. think about this woman growing up with literally any other parent on the planet, and she probably comes out (mostly) perfectly fine. but instead her dad is an insane, half-immortal ninja assassin who wants to wipe out most of civilisation. he also, actually, as much as an insane, half-immortal ninja assassin, loved her mother, and, along with talia, watches the woman he loves die (whether by overdose or by assassination, it’s a take your pick scenario, but i prefer the latter). so talia grows up with this man as he’s driven mad by grief, mad by the pit, mad by the longevity of his life, and any child in that situation needs cps. i’m for real. what he does to her is incredibly damaging, training her in much the same way he will later train damian, forcing her witness terrible atrocities and then perform some herself. she is also conditioned to the point of brainwashing to be loyal to him and never leave him and believe that his word is law, partly because ra’s thinks raising a child is the same as training a ninja warrior, and partly because she is his last link to melisande and he feels the extreme need to have her stay with him. this also results in her being incredibly sheltered, kept from the world, only really interacting with her father, who is literally fucking insane, and people she is going to fight/kill. that’s got to do damage to anyone, especially as a child.

as if that wasn’t enough, later in her life talia then undergoes serious trauma at the hands of her half-sister nyssa, who essentially infects her with pit madness, breaks her, and attempts to brainwash her into killing ra’s. one of the most crushing things i have ever witnessed is nyssa saying to talia that ra’s is letting this happen to her, that he truly doesn’t care enough to come and save her or protect her. i’m not saying that ra’s is a good father figure, but for talia he’s all she’s got by way of family and she literally worships the ground he walks on, and being told that he doesn’t care about her when it’s been a niggling thought of hers for years anyway. that’s gotta sting. so now she’s got two conflicting voices in her head – the one that says love your pops unconditionally, and the one that says remember that he doesn’t give a shit about you, which has been building for years, but nyssa really cements into place.

point the second: talia really does love bruce, but that love is warped and toxic, due to her fathers influence

i do believe that in her mind, talia loves bruce – however i also think it is impossible to tell whether that “love” is just the by-product of ra’s conditioning and decision that bruce was his rightful heir, and the frankly gross manipulation he used to get them into a relationship together. it’s like an arranged marriage on steroids. at one point it is literally an arranged marriage, without bruce’s consent (dc special series #15). talia has been taught to obey and please her father, and that is the reason she enters a relationship with bruce in the first place. over the course of this relationship she does develop feelings for him, but they will always be tainted by the unnatural way that they were pushed together. the moment bruce betrays the league ra’s is already setting her up to marry bane, which just goes to prove that her father really doesn’t give a shit about emotions or who exactly it was that she was in a relationship with, as long as it suited his needs. although talia stays loyal to bruce in her love for him and bruce defeats bane, making himself the “rightful heir” once more, it really shows like. ra’s could have picked anyone and she would have been forced into a relationship with them and potentially fallen in love. ra’s could have decided that superman was the rightful heir to the league and had talia imprint on him instead. the fact that its bruce, who trains with the league and who she falls in love with is more a case of wrong bat-time, wrong bat-place than anything else. she does continue to love him and to do things out of love for him, seen in no man’s land and in the fact that she takes in jason after his resurrection, and her emotions are clearly strong enough to stay with her and form a motivation for her actions over the next 40 years of comics, but that isn’t like. good writing. that’s the authors not knowing what to do with a female character beyond “hopelessly infatuated with male protagonist”. and even if you ignore some of the fucked up, retconned things grant morrison “accidentally” wrote about their relationship, her and bruce’s love was never safe or healthy. she fakes a miscarriage. there’s like, the constant threat of death. bruce uses her and she uses him right back. her dad oscillates between telling her to love him and telling her to kill him. every so often she does actually try to kill him but also sometimes she saves him. ra’s is there looming over them the entire time. there are lots of types of love and this one is so unhealthy that its really no wonder bruce constantly rejects a relationship with her (which she should do equally to him, but again, women are obsessed with their emotions and unable to give up on their love for a white man so :) ) while still saying he does feel for her.

point the third: she is trying to be a better person, but it is a fight against what has been ingrained into her

literally from talias first appearance in detective comics #411 she is saving bruce’s life, killing the then head of the league and ra’s second in command, dr darrk, to stop him from murdering bruce. however, she has, for DECADES, been manipulated by ra’s and she is often depicted as conflicted between loyalty to her father and her love for bruce. this is still dodgy territory – talia kills, which bruce doesn’t approve of in the slightest, and using a frankly obsessive and unhealthy attachment to a person is never really going to help you change, especially when you can’t rely on that person, bc bruce be dipping in and out of her life like a chicken nugget in ketchup. by the 00s, talia falls into the grey area in between villainess and heroine – she is often depicted doing the “right” thing, but for bruce, and often goes about it in the “wrong” way, or at least a way that he disapproves of. yes, dc have limited her by hinging her morality on her emotional attachment to bruce, for example, she comes to his aid in the 1999 no man’s land arc, but we’re getting there, and as time wears on and we enter an age where female characters are less merely supporting cast to the wonderful male protagonist, talia has begins show her own initiatives. watching her take over lexcorp and leave luthor absolutely penniless (superman/batman #6) was such a good direction to begin taking her character – she has clearly rejected her father and his conditioning and is working to her own agenda, which just so happens to align with the good guys. there’s a hint of her attachment to bruce, but she has begun developing an actual personality that isn’t just “brucie why don’t you wuv me”. this is probably the best she is written. ever. aaaaaaaaand then dc absolutely ruin it by making her just a plain old villain again. which should be fine, because there’s nothing wrong with a plain old villain, except the whole reason for her villainy is because she’s rejected her love for bruce. but then give it a few years and shes a villain still in love with bruce because they really are just stuck with her on this revolving door of crazy-ex feelings instead of letting her grow. so once again we’re back to her whole character orbiting around this one man, because yanno, that’s what women are good for. sigh.

point the fourth: damian wayne

the one thing i will not excuse her for is the way she treats damian growing up. she really isn’t a mother to him in any sense of the word, other than using her genetic material to help grow him. she is part of the reason he is so damaged and angry even as an incredibly young child, as she basically just lets ra’s have his way with the kid, which any good mother would not let happen. while talia does little to actively train damian, she also doesn’t stop ra’s from doing some really nasty shit to the boy when hes like … three years old and im like. ok bitch damn. however, talia never gets an option to not be a mother. ra’s has been treating her like a baby making machine to produce him an heir since she hit puberty, while simultaneously downplaying all her other talents and the fact that she is an exceptional warrior capable of leading the league herself. talia doesn’t get to choose whether she wants a child, that decision is made for her, and while she is definitely a bad mother to dami, it is partially understandable, especially when you factor in that ra’s treats damian as the heralded heir to the league by the time he’s like 6, again overlooking his loyal daughter who has been patiently waiting for ra’s to realise he doesn’t need a male heir or bruce wayne’s genetics. not saying it’s a good thing to want to be head of the demon/league, but it’s what she’s been conditioned to want, and ra’s is a real bastard for acting like she doesn’t exist. the point at which it becomes inexcusable is when she tries to do really gnarly shit like puppeteering her son’s body to use as a weapon, or cloning him against because he’s too loyal to batman. sorry talia but that shit don’t sit right with … anyone. however sometimes she’s written as …….. not caring but not a complete disaster with dami, so again we’re stuck with the comic book problem of inconsistency in character between writers.

so basically tldr; talia is a complex character who has been reduced to a weird love interest for batman over the years, and instead of allowing her to develop as a character, all of her plots are inherently tied to a man somehow, either ra’s, bruce or damian, which severely limits her as a character. she could be given a very interesting path, but that keeps getting overwritten and then rewritten, because no one can make up their mind about her. i think she does love bruce, but it is a toxic and unhealthy love from both sides, even if it is consensual and mutual (no drugging here, thanks grant morrison). and if anyone even mentions batman inc. to me, i will lose my mind.

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1 trip to bali, 8 ninja children and 2 tuxedos later :/ 

only @jorhdans​ can reblog 

bonus from a year before:

with damian living in the house, she was never really bruce’s present to start with :/ 

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also yes it is canon on this blog that sometimes he talks to the gargoyles ….,, they’re his fwiends …….,,,, leave him alon …..,,,,,,,,,,

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someone mentioned they like doc shaners art and 

only @jorhdans may rb

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bruce was born right handed, but only the batman operates with his right hand. bruce taught himself to be as ambidextrous as possible and uses his left hand for all the things bruce wayne might need to do (shaking hands, signatures etc) as another thing to distance himself from batman. his right hand will always have better dexterity so that is the one batman uses, and it is also the one more likely to be injured, which allows bruce to keep it in a pocket or under a desk, unhindering his day job and preventing any awkward questions.

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since im on a roll and keep meaning to talk about this;

i do not see bruce as some hulking giant beast of a man. obviously to each their own, but if you’ll spare me a few moments i have Reasons that may interest you;

i think a lot of artists feel the need to draw him Big and Beefy because thats the Superhero Body Type for guys. supermans out here 6'4 and as wide as a barn door, with an unholy amount of muscles and a lot of heroes, especially male members of the jl (excluding barry) are modelled on a similar premise. which is fine and dandy until you realise that batman is supposed to be a complete counterpoint to superman, and often in very literal ways. dark light, optimism cynicism, hope for the future and clinging to the past. not the clark isn’t clever or bruce isn’t strong (for a human), but theyre very much a brains and brawn duo, with bruce fighting strategically and clark ripping open asteroids etc. there is no need for batman to be drawn Enormous. obviously he’s still 6'2 and an absurdly fit muscular human male in the prime of his life, but it favours bruce to be leaner, as i like to call it the “swimmers build”, than clark. it serves as another nice visual counterpoint, where as often it feels like cramming them into the same panel is like ….. we’re going to need more room for all the muscles and posturing.

it doesn’t suit his fighting style or the demands of his job as batman. anyone who’s done basic physics is going to tell you that vaulting over rooftops and grappling between buildings only gets harder the heavier you are. there’s a reason people like acrobats and martial artists are not huge slabs of muscle - they don’t need to be, and it would end up hindering them. some of the feats of agility we see batman pull off just aren’t as feasible when you’re 250lbs, and certainly the larger and heavier you are, the slower you can get when responding to certain things, especially in a fight. DC are drawing a slugger fighting at lightweight speeds and it’s ridiculous. the fighting styles that bruce has learnt favour fighting smart, not hard, taking out a combatant in minimal moves and with a focus on their weak points, so why does he need to look like he can bench 500lbs on his pinky finger? plus the bigger you make him, the harder it becomes to “melt into the shadows” and all the other subterfuge-y and over dramatic things the league taught him. i love the arkham games, but the thought of you squeezing that character model into the air vents? lets just day its a good thing you go first person for those views. batman is fast, agile and highly skilled at deception, none of which lend themselves to the image of a great big muscled strong man.

it helps to conceal his identity. yes the batsuit definitely bulks him up a bit, because that many layers of nomex on anyone are going to start adding thiccccness, but seriously is bruce wayne was so unbelievably hulkingly ripped, people would start making the connection a lot sooner. being leaner means he can tailor suits to hide muscles and look for all intents and purposes like a slightly fitter than average man who has too much time to spend in his private gym. if he’s making suits rip and buttons pop every time he moves, people are going to start wondering why a guy who sits at a desk most days needs to be So Incredibly Shredded

batman doesn’t need to be physically huge to be intimidating. the suit itself is designed to be terrifying, when it’s looming out of the shadows, and he does seem to appear and disappear like some kind of supernatural entity. when he’s dangling a criminal over the edge of a building, and telling them their social security number and their children’s birthdays, it’s not the muscles are are scary. batman’s skill and ability to intimidate do not come from raw strength and power, but from his mind and his assassin training, so there’s no point in having him be a slab of muscle.

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blog is archived.

definitely needing a fresh start and all so im calling it quits on here and making a sparkly new blog. hit the heart if you want to remain mutuals ig jshfsjdgf