I may have found my significant other during some procrastination the other night. I've always felt that, despite his amazing talents, Grant Morrison treats Talia like absolute bollocks. He wrote my favourite Batman arc, the Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, where Talia is so inspiring and protective, and then he does a complete 180 with Batman & Son and THEN the [SPOILER ALERT] recently revealed Batman INC Leviathan storyline. I'm just getting sick and tired of his inability to write Talia as the character she was invented to be. I mean, even Winick was more respectful with Talia during the Lost Days (except #6's 'love' scene). 
 
But enough of my ramblings, here's someone else's:  
 
Original source - http://lipsofpoison.tumblr.com/post/1506783307/how-talia-al-ghul-is-written-at-dc
 

dcwomenkickingass:

This is so true. Talia has been royally jerked around lately, which is sad because as soon as I feel Morrison has progress with Damian’s characterisation, he sacrifices Talia’s characterisation just to add another level of angst to Damian. She’s already only shown interest in a detatched (but caring) way, she’s left other people to raise him, others to train him, almost handed him over to be bodyswapped, almost got him killed and more or less left him to do what she thinks he should - isn’t that enough for a ten year old, when you add in that he’s Batman’s son and all the crap that comes with being a Wayne?  I just think the whole thing was a bit unnecessary. If they wanted to reveal a clone, it could have been done so much better. If they wanted to drive a wedge between them, again, it could have been done with care for her character. I like Damian, but I hate the fact Talia’s character integrity has been more or less thrown to the wind for her son.

I mean, we had someone who cared about her kid enough to walk away from everything, only to abandon him when he wasn’t taking over? I’d think time wouldn’t bother the Al Ghul’s, considering the Pits. I’ll admit to being bias - my first experiences of Talia have been of a girl who’s loyalties were split between her feelings for Batman and her feelings for her father. Then her surrogate mother style relationship with Jason showcased her conflicting feelings all the way through Lost Days, which presumably she was still messed up from the Nyssa ordeal anyway.

Then we have the tables turned completely and she seems to turn into an evil head bitch in charge with almost no warning and barely any explanation? That doesn’t sound like someone conflicted between honour, duty and love to me. It sounds like a scapegoat, someone to be used as a plot point with no desire to give a damn about her reasoning or her character integrity, let alone her past.

As usual with comics, it’s not the route they’ve taken that bothers so much as the way they’ve done it. Talia could easily be any of these things, but she needs her reasons, her motivations and I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they don’t completely contradict everything we already knew about her as a character.

Once again, I feel that Morrison is an excellent writer but more and more, he seems to be just writing his own universe and to hell with anything anyone else has ever established, which isn’t really helpful when it comes to a multiple writers doing comics.

@RainEffect said:

@entropy_aegis: I liked the way she treated Jason in the first issue of the Lost Days, as it sort of represented a surrogate mother in a sense, as that blog says. If you remember, she resurrected Jason purely to win back Bruce's heart. Winick was really onto something with her blind love for Bruce, but then she kissed Jason and it went all downhill from there. From what I've read of the New 52's Red Hood and the Outlaws, it seems like they removed that 'romance' between Jason and Talia, but still kept the fact that she resurrected him and taught him to face his fears.

I just don't buy her being a surrogate mother to Jason,she had never met Jason prior to his death and vice versa.The most Jason would have known about her would have been through some files in the Batcomputer and knowing Bruce he would have classified her as a dangerous terrorist instead of a love interest.

She never gave a damn about Tim or Dick and yet she's supposed to be care about Jason?I think there was an Elseworlds where she intentionally left Tim to be killed cause she saw him as a weakness.It was a WHAT IF type of comic.

So when Talia struck a braindead Jason across the face and Jason did'nt retaliate which allowed Talia to say something like"He does'nt hit me,he never hits me" I rolled my eyes.

This was a really good read. Definitely lives up to the title.

I apologise - I had the wrong link. I just don't want anyone to think that I wrote this, even though it is like taking the words right from my mouth/heart. xD

On a side note, I actually don't mind her as a femme fatale, as long as she isn't crossing over into Catwoman's territory. That isn't to say I disavow any other representation, as my all time favourite is, of course, her depiction in No Man's Land - which I guess you could classify, looking at that diagram, as 'beloved'.

@RainEffect said:

On a side note, I actually don't mind her as a femme fatale, as long as she isn't crossing over into Catwoman's territory. That isn't to say I disavow any other representation, as my all time favourite is, of course, her depiction in No Man's Land - which I guess you could classify, looking at that diagram, as 'beloved'.

Which was ironically written by the same writer who wrote NML.