I know I’m reading too much into this, but the way he looks when he cocks his head looks like a gesture one might do when asking if someone is all right. I’m now just going to imagine this is Bane making sure Talia’s okay.
And look at Barsad handling his queen.
UNF….I could watch that Bane swagger all day.
Why I can buy Nolanverse Talia being attracted to him. Damn.
- Return to the Light : The Pit has already supplied Talia with ample horrors to last a lifetime; should she descend again & have to return to the sun without /him/ by her side. Well… She wonders whether she would make it back into the light at all. Everything TaliaXBane that we didn’t get to see in the movie. Fluff, angst, rating will change for smut in later chapters.
- The Cold And Heartless : Talia and Bane are separated when Talia is forced to escape from the Pit, but they are reunited when Ra’s Al Ghul brings Bane out of the prison to join the League and train with Talia. As Talia and Bane become closer, Ra’s Al Ghul doubts his decision and the consequences are not nearly as severe as the reality to come.
- Moments of Eternity : Different scenes of intimacy between Bane and Talia, from the tender and sweet to the sensual and erotic.
- One Breath : Lives are made out of hundreds of moments, thousands of breaths. But it only takes one breath to make a decision, to fall in love, to trade seemingly everything you have for a single, life changing soul.
- My Passion is My Downfall :Talia/Bane reliationship from beginning to end. “I felt the man under me take a deep breath before he answered me. “She has gone away, my sweet and I’m afraid she will not be coming back. It does not matter anymore; you are mine now and I will take care of you.”
- As I Slowly Fall into You : Time changes the physics of things and the bonds that shape relationships. Here is an account of how the relationship between Bane and Talia changed and blossomed into something more than platonic.
- Gotham is Ours : One soul, one purpose, regardless of distance, time or space. They had come to bring reckoning to Gotham together, but had to remain publicly apart to fulfill the work of the League of Shadows. An exploration of various scenes in the life of Bane and Miranda/Talia before and during the siege of Gotham until their final stand.
- Born into Darkness : This will start from when Talia’s mother first arrives in The Pit.
- Our Lips Are Sealed : It is not a face anyone could love, and he is glad to hide it away.
- Mask, Vengeance : He spent years in the pit, waiting for her, and he won’t let her go until she feels what he felt
Good list for the Nolanverse shippers. I haven’t read all of these yet, but the ones I have read were excellent.
A little sketch of Bane and Talia for Caitlin. Happy late birthday!
The Dark Knight Rises - Bane Scene 1 (Voice, speech, quotes) (by MovieTrailers1080)
I’d completely forgotten that Barsad knows exactly what Bane means to do to the henchman who brought Gordon down. D’awww. Totally imagining a bromance.
“Its the slow knife that cuts the deepest ” The Dark Knight Rises - HD (by erve1986)
Leviathan bless you, erve1986.
Get it while it’s hot, folks.
imheliababe said: Um, I don’t know if you’ve written about this before, but whenever I mention Talia my friends always say she’s “Bruce’s ex”, which I hate ‘cause she’s so. much. more. So in retaliation, may be you could comprise a list of *her* lovers?
Sure! I agree that it’s annoying that people tend to see her that way. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bruce, but we never hear of Bruce being referred to as “Selina’s ex” or anything, and Dick Grayson is never “that guy who dated Babs and Starfire.”
I’m obliged to point out that onlytalia has also recently done a post regarding Talia’s past romances, with commentary on other aspects of Talia’s life that people should read because it is, as always, good.
[Personal note: Actually, this topic is important to me because I used to be one of the people who just thought of Talia as Bruce’s ex. Though I’ve been a comics fan since I was about six, it wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I realized what a great character Talia is. When my best friend was watching BTAS for the first time because she wanted to get into it, when Talia first appeared in “Off Balance,” my friend asked me who that was, and I even said: “Oh, that’s just Talia. She’s not important,” then explained that she chases Bruce around is Ra’s al Ghul’s kid. Embarrassing confession there. Yikes. But I can see where your friends are coming from because I used to be of their opinion.]
In terms of past lovers:
Talia’s greatest love has always been Bruce. Obviously.
It’s easy to write her off as just his ex (I certainly did once), but I think it’s important to consider that not only does she love him, but he also was (or is, depending on the writer) in love with her as well. Talia was specifically designed to be the one woman Bruce could actually successfully love, per her creators (sorry, haters, it’s canon).
While her love for him has resulted in the occasional emotional breakdown, even people who don’t like her must concede that it has also resulted in a number of Bat-victories, the defeat of Ra’s al Ghul just when he was about to destroy the entire Justice League (and the world), Bruce gaining access to resources he might have otherwise had to work for, the corporate downfall of Lex Luthor, a biological Bat-son who has become a fan favorite and who creates a dynamic within the Bat-family that is truly a joy to read, and, in the controversial Morrisonverse, a war of such a grand scale that Batman couldn’t even conceive of it until it was too late.
The best result of her love for him, in my opinion, was this:
(Forgive the page curvature, damn my clumsy scanning abilities)
For those who aren’t familiar with that image, it’s from Batman: No Man’s Land #0, when Gotham has been destroyed by an earthquake (after it was already partially destroyed by a plague Ra’s unleashed on it)… and Bruce has given up on the city. Yep. Retired the cape and cowl and gave up. Talia arrives in Washington to slap the shit out of him and remind him that he’s Batman. In fact, while I can’t find the next page on my computer right now (though I could have sworn I scanned it once), she cites her love for him as one of the reasons he must go back to Gotham: not only does he dishonor himself by running and hiding, he dishonors her. Bruce sees reason after their evening together.
In other words, her love isn’t something to be written off.
Talia had eyes for no one but Bruce from 1971 until the 90s, at which point she met (on two separate occasions and in two separate stories) the original Azrael (Jean-Paul Valley) and Bane.
I can’t say much about her fling with Azrael, as I only have a couple of issues of that storyline, and, unfortunately, not the issues in which Talia expresses a romantic interest in him. Instead, I have the issues in which Talia tries to counsel people on their fashion choices. Onlytalia knows more about this one than I do.
Now onto Bane. If it’s not obvious from some of my past posts, I love me some Bane. He has been one of my favorite comics characters for years, so therefore A) his meeting with Talia in Bane of the Demon was of great interest to me when I became a Talia fan, and B) I approve of what Nolan did.
While Talia’s relationship with Bane went in a horrifying direction, it started out well enough. He admits to her that he has no idea how women work and proves that when he kisses her while talking about being her mate:
But Talia warms to him for some reason (probably a combination of her vulnerability following Bruce’s rejection and an admiration for Bane’s abilities), and she does sleep with him consensually following that awkward kiss:
I’m not sure, ultimately, what Talia actually felt about him there. She certainly isn’t falling in love with him. But she did like him enough, albeit briefly, to present him to Ra’s as something of a gift and enough to sleep with him once. (Discussion of where that went can be found here, since it’s not relevant, by that point, to this topic.)
Then, in the 2000s, she engaged in a sexual relationship with two unexpected men, Jason Todd and a member of the League of Assassins who was never named (I just always refer to him as Unnamed Minion and I think a few others do too.)
We never learned anything about Unnamed Minion or the details of their relationship, but two things were pretty obvious:
1) The guy actually saw Talia in her private moments of uncertainty, and Talia actually discussed her plans and her uncertainties with him:
and
2) He took the opportunity afforded him by his position to try to give her useful advice, even though that advice wasn’t something she wanted to hear.
In the above scene, Unnamed Minion acknowledges Talia’s love for Bruce. He definitely doesn’t think he’s The One for her, and he seems genuinely concerned that she’s playing with a fire that will burn her rather than redeem her. I loved his fearlessness with her in that moment, and the fact that he doesn’t try to stake any claim on her.
Then, a couple of issues later, Talia slept with Jason Todd.
Some readers hated this moment with a fiery passion, but I loved it (that post used to be on my Tumblr but I can’t find it now, so I’m using someone else’s reposting of it, which used to link to an old blog…complicated).
For all his batdickery, Bruce is still the angelic good boy who requires inspires Talia to work for a more humanitarian definition of the greater good, but Jason is the archetypal bad boy in the leather jacket with the motorcycle. He provides a kind of moral freedom for her, safe from judgment from either her father or Bruce, that she has never experienced before.
So she hasn’t had as many exes as, say, Bruce or Dick have had, but she certainly hasn’t limited her romantic/sexual interests just to Bruce. And while those other affairs have been very brief, I think they’ve all served a distinct purpose in her characterization.
To sum up: She made Batman be Batman again when he chickened out. Hardly “just an ex.”
(Sorry for the length of this one. I rambled.)
Now that I’ve reblogged a lot of Talia, does anyone have any Talia requests? Or requests for things involving the other al Ghuls, including her family and the honorary Nolanverse one? Pictures*, questions, things you want me to do commentary on, anything else? Comicsverse, Nolanverse, whatever. I need to redeem myself to Tumblr by doing more than just reblogging this week.
[*Quick note on pictures: I can’t promise I’ll have it, but I do have a massive Talia collection so it’s likely that I will. However, I don’t know how to make gifs, and I’m also being an old fogey and waiting on the DVD of The Dark Knight Rises rather than watching the leaked HQ version that’s going around, so I can’t lovely HQ images from that of my own. Anything else, however, goes.]
I will always love this moment just for their reactions to seeing each other up close again.
See previous post for additional commentary because it also applies here.
Goodbye.
People can say what they want about the film’s portrayal of these two. Certainly, there are some intense and conflicting opinions out there. But I don’t think anyone can deny that these were some beautiful moments.
Also, thanks (whoever originally posted these) for the high quality gifs. I can actually see his lips forming “goodbye” in that one.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some reckoning in my eye again.
What Nolanverse Bruce sees when he regains consciousness after being tortured:
What Talia sees when she regains consciousness after being tortured:
Buahahahahahahaha
holy shit so fucking true.
AWESOME
Whatever people feel about Nolan and his trilogy, I feel that it has to be admitted that he worked the whole thing together very artfully. It’s like every moment of TDKR ties into something that happened previously or later.
