I have no clue what he's smiling about (I found that smile kind of unsettling), but my best guess was that Nyssa like her father didn't kill him when she could, despite claiming that she won't make the same mistakes again, and he smiles about that.
*nod nod* Entirely plausible. And... yeah. Bruce smiles are rarely NOT unsettling to me. *snerk* That's actually one of the reasons I made another Gothamite mood theme. Could not cope.
So after you've read the whole thing in one setting, what do you think is the reason why Nyssa would want to take over the organization and continue his kind of work? In the end I didn't get her character at all.
I read her whole set-up as "R'as has spent the last several decades -- or, perhaps, centuries -- doing everything he can to make sure her experiences were painful. Playing on whatever he could in the mortals around her to turn her into the sort of person who could not look on any mortal who wasn't, essentially, a MINION without fear, mistrust, and paranoia.
I see her as someone who tried very, very hard to turn her back on R'as' lifestyle and beliefs, and then was forced to watch her loved ones suffer and die -- pretty much always (indirectly) because of R'as' interference.
And while she *blames* R'as, she can't quite ever entirely make the connection in her mind until that dinner when he asks her for help. At which point she sets in motion a plan to kill him using his daughter. Along the way, those last few shreds of conscience (sanity?) fall by the wayside... my thought about those disturbing Nyssa/Talia scenes and the way they always (?) coincided with horrible flashbacks is that Nyssa was coming to realize that her actions with Talia were pretty much R'as' own.
By that point, she's come too far to turn back. She never stops wanting R'as dead, but it stops being about battling evil, or even about vengeance. I think it becomes about... the necessary conclusion of a battle between equals.
Rucka seems to be implying that all the grooming of Talia R'as has done canonically was never more than a back-up plan, or possibly even just a smokescreen. Which is an interesting way to handle it. In the hands of a lesser writer, it would've just been painful and Mary-Sue-ish.
But since Rucka rules, and since I never had that much invested in R'as or Talia to begin with... anyway.
no subject
*nod nod* Entirely plausible. And... yeah. Bruce smiles are rarely NOT unsettling to me. *snerk* That's actually one of the reasons I made another Gothamite mood theme. Could not cope.
So after you've read the whole thing in one setting, what do you think is the reason why Nyssa would want to take over the organization and continue his kind of work? In the end I didn't get her character at all.
I read her whole set-up as "R'as has spent the last several decades -- or, perhaps, centuries -- doing everything he can to make sure her experiences were painful. Playing on whatever he could in the mortals around her to turn her into the sort of person who could not look on any mortal who wasn't, essentially, a MINION without fear, mistrust, and paranoia.
I see her as someone who tried very, very hard to turn her back on R'as' lifestyle and beliefs, and then was forced to watch her loved ones suffer and die -- pretty much always (indirectly) because of R'as' interference.
And while she *blames* R'as, she can't quite ever entirely make the connection in her mind until that dinner when he asks her for help. At which point she sets in motion a plan to kill him using his daughter. Along the way, those last few shreds of conscience (sanity?) fall by the wayside... my thought about those disturbing Nyssa/Talia scenes and the way they always (?) coincided with horrible flashbacks is that Nyssa was coming to realize that her actions with Talia were pretty much R'as' own.
By that point, she's come too far to turn back. She never stops wanting R'as dead, but it stops being about battling evil, or even about vengeance. I think it becomes about... the necessary conclusion of a battle between equals.
Rucka seems to be implying that all the grooming of Talia R'as has done canonically was never more than a back-up plan, or possibly even just a smokescreen. Which is an interesting way to handle it. In the hands of a lesser writer, it would've just been painful and Mary-Sue-ish.
But since Rucka rules, and since I never had that much invested in R'as or Talia to begin with... anyway.