Barbara Gordon | Batgirl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ladyofgotham) wrote2023-09-27 11:10 pm
ladyofgotham) wrote2023-09-27 11:10 pm
Application
User Name/Nick: Sage
User DW:shobogan
Plurk:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
shobogan
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Zerxus Ilerez
Character Name: Barbara Gordon
Series: Elseworld’s Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, aka Earth-1098
Age: Mid-Thirties
From When?: In the climactic battle against Luthor, an enraged Supergirl tosses Barbara out a window. Instead of surviving by the skin of her teeth as she does in canon, she dies.
Inmate Justification: Barbara sees herself as a noble protector, and in some ways she isn’t wrong; her drive to uplift her city and its people is genuine, and she's saved hundreds of lives as Batgirl.
Unfortunately, she’s decided that the best way to do this is ironclad control. She’s isolated Gotham for the last ten years and fought a war to keep it that way. She hasn’t killed for it, so clearly that means she hasn’t crossed the line into being more of a villain than a hero.
Why does your character require redemption? How can working with a warden on the Barge help them? Feel free to just give a brief general overview here; we're going to ask for specifics down below.
Arrival: She agreed, secure in the knowledge that she can manipulate this omniscient entity into letting her get back to work as soon as possible.
Abilities/Powers:
Barbara has been honing both her mind and body since childhood to be not just a vigilante, but one who can challenge people with powers. She's a master martial artist, a seasoned detective, a clever engineer and a brilliant programmer.
She does rely on the many gadgets she's devised over the years, and she won't have any of those.
I'd like for her to arrive in her Batsuit, with all offensive capabilities stripped and the body armour itself bashed and battered all to hell. The defensive and analytical tech would still be there, but not repairable unless she actually asks for help.
Inmate Information:
"Her whole world died...and a new creature of the night was born."
Barbara considers herself to be the most logical person in an increasingly bizarre world, but at heart her entire identity is founded on childhood trauma. Terror and grief have driven her since she was ten years old, and she's able to justify it all because she's fiendishly clever in the worst way.
The trickiest part is that she isn't entirely wrong about her chosen convictions. Gotham City was drowning in corruption and cruelty, with far too many children experiencing the same horror without the support she was given afterwards. Someone needed to step up and change things.
What she didn't need to do was take as much control as she ultimately did. Batgirl became the city's official protector, with the final word on security - like installing a city-wide surveillance system and banning paranormals from the city entirely.
Her rationale is logical on the surface - no paranormal people, no paranormal crime - but it meant ousting people from their homes even if the'd never committed a crime in their lives; it meant closing their borders to anyone who didn't meet specific criteria. The Justice Society went to war with her over this, and lost.
Batgirl doesn't kill, but she has absolutely destroyed lives and told herself that it was worth it, from innocent bystanders to the heroes she fought. (And she does consider them heroes; in her eyes they're naive, reckless, and/or incompetent, but she recognises their good intentions. They can have the rest of the world, while she protects this one precious corner of it.)
Please lay out the most important things that your character's warden will need to know about them. Remember that permanent wardens will receive a file on their inmate's entire life story, and while we won't require you to write out a full history here (though we'll ask for at least a link to one elsewhere in the app), we'd like to hear about the highlights in your own words! This should include any serious crimes committed, details about the harm they've done to others, and major life events and how they were affected by them. While this wouldn't necessarily be included explicitly in the file, please also touch on their defining personality traits and behaviour patterns, their general temperament, their worldview, and how they react to challenges.
Path to Redemption: When Barbara agrees to being an Inmate, it’s out of grim pragmatism; she just died, and this is an alternative. She doesn’t see herself as perfect, but she does see herself as justified, and it will take a lot of work to shake those foundations.
She's built her entire identity on some fundamental assumptions about the world and her place in it. Most of them need to be challenged - some altered, and some thrown aside completely. The Barge itself and what it puts people through will do some work on its own; a Warden will need to take that further and refuse to let her bluff or argue her way out of making progress.
Ultimately, Barbara needs to separate what Gotham really does need from her and what’s fuelled by fear and anger. There is no universe in which she’ll retire as Batgirl, but there is one where Batgirl becomes something better. Once she got over herself a little, she started to work very well with Supergirl; it's only one crack in a wall of pride and paranoia, but a patient Warden can definitely pry it into something bigger.
Wardens will have the most luck in playing on that initial pragmatism: there really is only one way back to her life, back to her city and her family and her duty, and it’s through. She may not begin to think that giving herself more of a life matters for a good while, but truly believing that she can be better for Gotham will be a watershed moment.
What does your character need to change about themselves, and what sorts of milestones do you envision them needing to reach before they're ready for graduation? How will they react to being on the Barge? How will they react to being wardened? What sorts of wardening styles would they be likely to respond best to, and conversely, what wardening styles would likely be ineffective or unhelpful? What methods can a warden use to get through to them, and what are some ideas for things that might trigger or motivate them to change?
History: Here
Sample Network Entry: 5-10 sentences of spoken/written monologue, not including narration. This sample should reflect the character's day-to-day behavior and a distinctive voice, and must be Barge setting specific. You are permitted to link a thread from the Test Drive Meme, as long as it's recent (within 3 months of application date) and in network style.
Sample RP: 3-5 paragraphs of prose or brackets RP, with focus on both action and internal thought processes. Must be Barge setting specific. You are permitted to link a thread from the Test Drive Meme, as long as it's recent (within 3 months of application date) and in log style.
Special Notes:
User DW:
shoboganPlurk:
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Zerxus Ilerez
Character Name: Barbara Gordon
Series: Elseworld’s Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, aka Earth-1098
Age: Mid-Thirties
From When?: In the climactic battle against Luthor, an enraged Supergirl tosses Barbara out a window. Instead of surviving by the skin of her teeth as she does in canon, she dies.
Inmate Justification: Barbara sees herself as a noble protector, and in some ways she isn’t wrong; her drive to uplift her city and its people is genuine, and she's saved hundreds of lives as Batgirl.
Unfortunately, she’s decided that the best way to do this is ironclad control. She’s isolated Gotham for the last ten years and fought a war to keep it that way. She hasn’t killed for it, so clearly that means she hasn’t crossed the line into being more of a villain than a hero.
Why does your character require redemption? How can working with a warden on the Barge help them? Feel free to just give a brief general overview here; we're going to ask for specifics down below.
Arrival: She agreed, secure in the knowledge that she can manipulate this omniscient entity into letting her get back to work as soon as possible.
Abilities/Powers:
Barbara has been honing both her mind and body since childhood to be not just a vigilante, but one who can challenge people with powers. She's a master martial artist, a seasoned detective, a clever engineer and a brilliant programmer.
She does rely on the many gadgets she's devised over the years, and she won't have any of those.
I'd like for her to arrive in her Batsuit, with all offensive capabilities stripped and the body armour itself bashed and battered all to hell. The defensive and analytical tech would still be there, but not repairable unless she actually asks for help.
Inmate Information:
"Her whole world died...and a new creature of the night was born."
Barbara considers herself to be the most logical person in an increasingly bizarre world, but at heart her entire identity is founded on childhood trauma. Terror and grief have driven her since she was ten years old, and she's able to justify it all because she's fiendishly clever in the worst way.
The trickiest part is that she isn't entirely wrong about her chosen convictions. Gotham City was drowning in corruption and cruelty, with far too many children experiencing the same horror without the support she was given afterwards. Someone needed to step up and change things.
What she didn't need to do was take as much control as she ultimately did. Batgirl became the city's official protector, with the final word on security - like installing a city-wide surveillance system and banning paranormals from the city entirely.
Her rationale is logical on the surface - no paranormal people, no paranormal crime - but it meant ousting people from their homes even if the'd never committed a crime in their lives; it meant closing their borders to anyone who didn't meet specific criteria. The Justice Society went to war with her over this, and lost.
Batgirl doesn't kill, but she has absolutely destroyed lives and told herself that it was worth it, from innocent bystanders to the heroes she fought. (And she does consider them heroes; in her eyes they're naive, reckless, and/or incompetent, but she recognises their good intentions. They can have the rest of the world, while she protects this one precious corner of it.)
Please lay out the most important things that your character's warden will need to know about them. Remember that permanent wardens will receive a file on their inmate's entire life story, and while we won't require you to write out a full history here (though we'll ask for at least a link to one elsewhere in the app), we'd like to hear about the highlights in your own words! This should include any serious crimes committed, details about the harm they've done to others, and major life events and how they were affected by them. While this wouldn't necessarily be included explicitly in the file, please also touch on their defining personality traits and behaviour patterns, their general temperament, their worldview, and how they react to challenges.
Path to Redemption: When Barbara agrees to being an Inmate, it’s out of grim pragmatism; she just died, and this is an alternative. She doesn’t see herself as perfect, but she does see herself as justified, and it will take a lot of work to shake those foundations.
She's built her entire identity on some fundamental assumptions about the world and her place in it. Most of them need to be challenged - some altered, and some thrown aside completely. The Barge itself and what it puts people through will do some work on its own; a Warden will need to take that further and refuse to let her bluff or argue her way out of making progress.
Ultimately, Barbara needs to separate what Gotham really does need from her and what’s fuelled by fear and anger. There is no universe in which she’ll retire as Batgirl, but there is one where Batgirl becomes something better. Once she got over herself a little, she started to work very well with Supergirl; it's only one crack in a wall of pride and paranoia, but a patient Warden can definitely pry it into something bigger.
Wardens will have the most luck in playing on that initial pragmatism: there really is only one way back to her life, back to her city and her family and her duty, and it’s through. She may not begin to think that giving herself more of a life matters for a good while, but truly believing that she can be better for Gotham will be a watershed moment.
What does your character need to change about themselves, and what sorts of milestones do you envision them needing to reach before they're ready for graduation? How will they react to being on the Barge? How will they react to being wardened? What sorts of wardening styles would they be likely to respond best to, and conversely, what wardening styles would likely be ineffective or unhelpful? What methods can a warden use to get through to them, and what are some ideas for things that might trigger or motivate them to change?
History: Here
Sample Network Entry: 5-10 sentences of spoken/written monologue, not including narration. This sample should reflect the character's day-to-day behavior and a distinctive voice, and must be Barge setting specific. You are permitted to link a thread from the Test Drive Meme, as long as it's recent (within 3 months of application date) and in network style.
Sample RP: 3-5 paragraphs of prose or brackets RP, with focus on both action and internal thought processes. Must be Barge setting specific. You are permitted to link a thread from the Test Drive Meme, as long as it's recent (within 3 months of application date) and in log style.
Special Notes: