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[acro_bat_ic]

Player Info

Name: Kevin
Age: 21
Contact: dragon8writer on plurk and aim
Characters Already in Teleios: Faith and Ruby
Reserve: here

Character Basics:

Character Name: Barbara Gordon
Journal: acro_bat_ic
Age: 18
Fandom: The Batman
Canon Point: End of series.
Debt:

Class A: 2 years
1 year – betrayed her father’s wishes that she avoid a dangerous life of crime fighting, by putting on her bat costume – and not telling him. (ongoing)
1 year – Betrayed Ivy’s whereabouts to Batman (in the hope of helping, mind, but still.0
Class B: 33 years, 6 months
27 years – 52 counts of assault over 3 seasons years(?) of super heroism.
6 months – kicking batman (and otherwise assaulting him) to stop him from setting off a toxin.
5 years – 10 counts of breaking and entering into various hideouts.
6 months – burglering “borrowing” the batbot
6 months – taking control of batman’s motorcycle (and preceding to crash it)
Class C: 56 years
1 month, Escaping Custody – after Ivy kidnapped her.
2 years, six months – 30 counts of Ignoring a direct order by a superior (batman)
5 months - Misappropriation of police issued equipment – stealing her father’s trackers and other equipment for bat use (at least one on screen, assuming a few times off screen before she got official equipment.)
2 months - Reckless Driving (A motor cycle, and a car.)
3 months – trespassing (to get to villains)
7 months – falling sorry for oneself.
1 month - Going Against the Wishes of Someone Who Loves You – again, putting on the mask.
1 month – keeping secrets from loved ones – again
1 month – sassiness
1 month – crashing someone’s flying headquarters.
1 month – operating machinery you have no idea how to use (regardless of success)
1 month – sidekicking for a hero against their will.
1 month – continuously teasing the partner that’s been assigned to you.
1 month – giving up on a friend (Red AKA Pam AKA Poison Ivy)

List crimes you’ve created for your character here.

Crashing someone’s flying headquarters

Sidekicking for a hero against their will.

Operating machinery you have no idea how to use (regardless of success)

Continuously teasing the partner that’s been assigned to you.

Giving up on a friend

GRAND TOTAL: 91 years, 6 months

Canon Character Section:

History:
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Barbara_Gordon_(The_Batman) is most of it – though I’ll add that she actually got the official batgear back toward the end of S3, before Dick’s appearance in S4.

Also, her home life (with her father) is generally nice, with some sorrow over the lack of her mother. She loves her father, and it’s because of him that she wanted so badly to be a crime fighter. Unfortunately, he discouraged her from becoming a policewoman, concerned about her safety. Instead, he pushed her into gymnastics, believing she could play in the Olympics.

She actually first came up with this costume after a debacle with her then-friend Pamela Isley, which turned her friend into a super villain. Barbara realized that her father would never allow her to become a cop. She decided to use a mask and skip towards being a super hero.
Personality:

Barbara comes off as a sassy and impulsive teenager*, always passionate about what she wants and willing to go after it. We don’t see that much of her life as a civilian, but what we do see of her at home isn’t that different from what we see of her as Batgirl.

She’s smart, answering questions in class but not being the teacher’s pet. When teased by the self-purported class clown, she sent back a zinger of her own with a far better reaction from the class than the original. She doesn’t make much trouble, that we see, but neither does she always do what she’s told. She makes that clear to everyone from the get-go, skipping gymnastic lessons to protest a company’s treatment of the environment. Barbara might respect authority figures… but she doesn’t let herself be ruled by them. She’s a willful young woman who isn’t afraid to go after what she believes in. Though, as her father points out, what she believes in occasionally shifts. The environmental love was new, and most likely inspired by her friend Pamela Isley (later to become Poison Ivy).

That didn’t stop it from devoting her all to it, though, sneaking into buildings to confront CEOs. The same ways she devoted herself to gymnastics, despite it being her father’s idea – his goal to deflect her from a career path as a police officer. The fact that she could match Dick, who’d been raised by performers to perform, shows that she clearly took the lessons seriously (except when she chose to skip them for something else.)

Her desire to fight crime goes more deeply than most of her impulses, though, and shines clear through to the surface. It comes out in the form of her bat costume – and again, she acts about the same in it as she does out.

Though it’s clear she’s intent on and passionate about what she’s doing, she’s also as impulsive as ever. She once leapt onto Batman’s motorcycle while it was on autopilot, took it over, and ended up crashing it. Another time she leaped into Batman’s massive battle armor to fight the Joker when he was pumped up on Bane’s muscle-making formula. On yet another occasion, she took the helm of a villain’s flying headquarters to steer it away from the city and crash it into Gotham bay. At no point in of this did she receive one iota of training on how to use this equipment. The motorcycle she saw as a chance to have fun while catching up with Batman. The other two times she saw it as a necessity to stop a crook or save lives. Both times she did it without any real planning.

That’s not to say Barbara can’t plan. She’s an intelligent person who’s even been known to retreat when the odds are too much against her. But she doesn’t always bother to plan ahead, when an idea takes her. Sometimes she’s apt to just leap into the fray of battle and start kicking butt. Once she and Robin left their stationed stake out to get some snacks from the vending machine in the police office – and while there, they traded joking theories about how a man on a wanted poster had lost his eye. They almost got knocked out when the villains sprung their attack, but they did have fun.

After all, Barbara breaks out the sass on villains as easily as anyone else; whether they’re actually there or not. The sass is actually the side she often chooses to show the world to deflect from deeper motivations and to avoid showing off any fear. (Such as when she traded jokes with Robin after Black Masks threats.)

For those more familiar with the comics, it would be good to think of this version as a mixture between the traditional Barbara Gordon, and Stephanie Brown. She even has a theme of purple running through her equipment.

*Barbara’s about eighteen, at this point. She was sixteen when the series started, but – by this episode – had started college “Back in September.” (Since Barbara Gordon’s birthday is in September, at least in the comics, it’s likely she had her birthday and turned eighteen.)
Shifting the focus more inward, one of the most important things to recognize about Barbara is that she truly values justice. It’s the main reason she put on the bat costume. There’s no traumatic event in her past, or run in with the criminal element that caused her to make the decision. Her father is the police commissioner, and his passion for justice had the good luck to rub off on her. She in fact wanted to be a member of the police force herself, at first.

Unfortunately, Commissioner Gordon didn’t really want his daughter going into a job where she got shot at. He actively discouraged Barbara from joining the police force, and she suspected that he’d never allow her to. That’s why she made herself the Batgirl outfit. She thought it would be a way to fight crime regardless of what anyone else thought.

The second thing to realize about Barbara in fact ties into that first; this particular version of Barbara does everything with a youthful passion. On top of crime fighting, she also has an interest in the environment. She and fellow redhead Pamela Isley joined together in order to protest companies that mistreated it. Unfortunately the protests turned out to be scouting missions for Pam, who would afterwards hire a mercenary to take out the buildings.

Barbara only learned this later. But she showed a loyalty that matches her love of justice when it happened. Rather than turning Pam over to the police, Barbara went directly to Pamela to try and stop her. When that failed, and an accident gave Pamela powers over plants, she still did not go to the police – instead, she went to Batman about the newly made “Poison Ivy,” recognizing the issue and hoping to find a solution. Trying to stop Ivy was in fact her first mission as Batgirl.

I would like to note at this point that it is justice Barbara values, not just the law, and that neither ever entirely eclipses friendship or loyalty in her mind. When Poison Ivy first started up, Barbara did not really want Pamela to get arrested, she just wanted her friend stopped. In fact, when a classmate of hers later joined the Joker in a massive spree of practical jokes, Barbara worked to stop him without having him hurt. She didn’t want him being punished for what she saw as a mere mistake. This is despite the fact that they did not get along, and – unlike with Ivy – had nothing to do with a previous friendship.

It’s not restricted to crime fighting alone, either, as seen in “attack of the terrible trio.” Even in her civil life, Barbara was quick to berate a bully for picking on a few misfits. Importantly, she was just as quick to berate the trio for enjoying the pain of the bullying jock. Cliques don’t matter to her. Friendship does, but not enough that she’ll allow people to be hurt. There’s a reason she never hesitates to take Ivy down, despite their past. In the end, she’s got to do what she feels is right: whatever that happens to be.

Truthfully, Barbara is very independently minded - not to mention stubborn. She ignored her father’s protective orders and hid her face under a mask, so that she could go off to fight crime. When Batman told her no, she essentially told him that he couldn’t stop her. She wanted to work with him against crime, and she continued showing up and joining him despite all protests. She continued even when he attempted to ignore her, his repeated ditching of her, and his rebuffing of her status as his partner. She continued showing up, and continued referring to herself as his sidekick with single minded determination to prove herself, until he finally accepted her. Mostly because she saved his life, saved the city, and kept going when everything else was falling apart. This is apparent whether dealing with friends, partners, or the law itself.

That said, she obviously values team work and respects Batman, her inspiration for putting on the mask. He’s the hero her father is always thanking. It’s likely that she (unconsciously) sees him as a secondary father figure: desiring his approval of her crime fighting, in lieu of her actual father who is not allowed to know what she is doing, and who has never approved of her desire to go into crime.

This is most likely why she continuously strove to be accepted as his sidekick, even while ignoring half his orders: always trying to prove herself, always pushing into battle in the hopes of getting a job well done from Batman (not to mention from the unknowing Commissioner – though his approval she could have in every other aspect of her life.)

It also explains why she was so often annoyed at Bruce throughout the series. First because he left her out of the loop, making her practically stalk him if she wanted to find anything out and only revealing information on a need-to-know basis. Then because he brought in Dick: an “official” sidekick, who had gotten to see the Batcave and knew Bruce’s secret identity despite neither being revealed to Barbara. Not to mention him not knowing where she went to college. He didn’t even know that he had graduated high school, in the fifth season.

Bruce did begin to correct some of this, in the hopes of making them more of a team. He reveals his identity and takes her to the Batcave. It still left her somewhat jealous of Dick, though, not to mention annoyed with Batman for simply scooping up a partner after putting her through so much.

She did eventually come to accept Robin as a member of the team, and to work alongside him. Still, the rivalry between them was eternal, much like with actual siblings. Like a big sister, annoyed at how much attention bb bro is gaining for himself, Barbara is caught between annoyance with Bruce over how little attention she gets… and actual affection for the younger partner she didn’t want, but who’s presence she has still come to rely upon. The end result is mutual teasing. It’s something that marks both their rivalry and their bond.

Of course, as much as she relies upon them, as much as she wants Batman’s approval, her desire to fight crime predates both of them. With a police commissioner as a father, practically growing up in the station, her desire to fight for justice is still more deeply instilled than anything else.
Powers/Abilties:
Barbara is a gymnast – ones with the potential to go to the Olympics, to hear her father speak.

She’s got decent hand eye coordination, allowing her to successfully throw her baterangs, and has some minor ability as a detective. She was able to keep up with Bruce, at the very least, even when he wasn’t actually telling her what was going on.

Although her only formal training is in gymnastics, she has been working alongside Bruce for these last three months. She has effective combat skills, as a result – mostly based on her gymnastics – and is quite good with her weapons. These have mostly included grappling hooks and batarangs.
She can also pick a lock.


Appearance:
Red haired, young looking, and often wearing a bat cowl – she has large brown eyes, and stands at about 5’6. Her hair goes down to the shoulders.

Samples:

Actionspam Sample: Have a thread? C:

Prose Sample: I used this in the devils see, if it works.

Barbara flipped, her purple cape catching at the air as she moved off the top of a branch, her fingers snatching at another tree’s limb. It bent, cracking open beneath her finger. She twisted, catching at another branch and twisting her way up on top of it.

“So… not like roof hopping,” she muttered, frowning down at her wood-burned fingers. No splinters so far as she could see. Go her.

Picking her next step more cautiously, she leapt to a sturdier branch, feeling it creak.

A crack reached her ears, up above. Her eyes darted up, scouting for a shadow. Maybe it had been a bad idea to try out tree hopping. Maybe it had been a worse idea shaking off all offers of help from the odd collection of bat-lings she’d found. “And maybe I should stop thinking about ‘maybe’s and get out of here…”

Another crack, and a branch fell toward her from above. She moved quickly, dodging out from under it. She could see a shadow at the edge of vision, moving toward her. She launched a batarang in response, the sea-battered metal veering off course before it reached its target. She veered as well, making a final twists to reach the ground and take off running, feet nearly sliding out from underneath her when she hit the floor. Her follower thudded to the ground a little behind her.

Batman had taught her that being small could be an asset. She was slight enough to slip between the trees, just as she had been light enough to move across the branches. The creature knew the territory better, though, and it was catching up. She wished Bats was there to help – but he wasn’t. So she was just going to have to make do without him.

Barbara knew she lacked the physical strength to take on the creatures. Worse, what strength she did have seemed to be flagging, her footsteps growing slower as her heartbeat pumped faster in fear. Glancing up into the branches, her vision seemed to blur, arguing against any attempt to move back into the trees. They’d warned her that things were harder here. Another thing she probably should have listened to.

There was no time for maybes, though. Just her and the too solid forest as she tried to make her way back toward the buildings, wondering what Batman would say if he could see her there. To think her pops had been worried about the life of a police officer, way back home in Gotham…

Barbara put that thought out of her mind, too, and just ran.