quipper | VISUALS

Stephanie Brown. Formerly a variable. A loose end. A liability. As Spoiler, Brown’s skill was perpetually outweighed by her need to both please…and obsess. Thought I’m tempted to say I misjudged her, that isn’t the case. Who she was just so happens to no longer be who she is. Reminding me of the original Batgirl in more ways than one… Brown’s now a wild card in the best of ways. As the only low-profile member of the family team organization, Stephanie has an invisibility the rest of us do not have the luxury of possessing. Like the others, Brown has shown growth in my absence. Unlike the others, my return may have the least impact on her operation—one not born of fear, but of hope for a brighter tomorrow. Who knows—maybe there’s room for hope in Gotham, after all.

Bruce Wayne travelled through time, a living, temporal bomb – teeming with highly dangerous Omega energy. He was a caveman, a pirate, a pilgrim, a cowboy, a gumshoe… something with computer tentacles from the far future… And when he finally got home, when Bruce Wayne finally beat death, beat fate, conquered time itself, what happened?

BATGIRL SLAPPED HIM IN THE FACE.

Right across that beautiful, battle-scarred, chiseled chin of his. It was a gut reaction. He put her through a test she knew she didn’t need, after a year of Stephanie proving to the entire world that she deserved a second chance. She was offended. Disgusted. And in that moment… she had a natural, human reaction. And then what happened after that?

Batgirl apologized.

Because Stephanie Brown is a person. Who is also a hero. And a girl. But first and foremost, she’s a person… who watches Futurama reruns on basic cable (but that’s beside the point). Knowing that is key to writing Batgirl (not the Zoidberg part; the person part.)

She’s a human being. Free to make her own mistakes, to have her own triumphs. Sure, she has limitations… but Stephanie knows what they are. And she isn’t going to let anything hold her back. Batgirl’s becoming more self-aware, as we all do when we’re her age. She’s growing.

Have I ever been a nineteen year old girl who moonlights as a costumed vigilante?

The short answer is “No.” But I have been nineteen – just like Stephanie. Right at the edge of undeniable, honest-to-goodness adulthood. She’s finding herself, and in the pages of Batgirl, we’re right there beside her, along for the ride.

And much like everyone’s first year of college, Stephanie’s is going to be a bumpy one. Filled with Reapers and Witch Boys. Beetles and Bathounds. Deadlines and finals. Even though extraordinary things come her way, there’s always the “normal” thrown into the mix.

Batgirl by her very nature should be immediately relatable to the reader. That’s why we gave her a costume where you can see her eyes and, more importantly, her smile. She’s a hero with emotion, which is both her biggest vulnerability… and her greatest asset. And in that space in between, that’s where Batgirl’s sense of hope comes from.

Hope for a brighter tomorrow. Hope for a safer Gotham. Hope for a second chance at… everything. Batgirl not only wants the world to be a better place, but she believes that it’s possible. Which means that (hopefully) Stephanie Brown is just like you and me. Except that she knows some karate.

I think, whether or not he'd ever admit it, she's definitely has started to earn Damian's respect, which I think is a very hard thing to earn. And was so much fun to watch with Dick and Damian trying to work out their working relationship and kind of their Lethal Weapon dynamic. I think it's hard earned, but she's probably got some grounding points with him. But then from her side of it too, she never had a younger sibling and I think she's kinda situated herself into this kind of older sister kinda role with Damian. Especially because she's quasi-lost her life before and is working in this clean-slate, second-chance-for-everything mode in the Batgirl title, she definitely, because of her upbringing with Cluemaster dad and there was a time when her mom didn't really have everything all that together, that she didn't get to have that much of a childhood. So, she definitely, in Damian, sees a chance to make sure that someone else gets the childhood she didn't have. One can also kind of reach and say it's also got something to do with that she gave a child away. So there's a maternal instinct that she definitely has, not just towards Damian but also to the other people in her life in the city. She's trying to make up for lost time whether she knows it or not.

I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.
( charles dickens )

A trap is only a trap if you don’t know about it. If you know about it, it’s a challenge.
( china miéville )

You are meant to fight. When you are sick, your body fights for its right to function. When you hold your breath, your body fights for its right to breathe. There are billions of tiny events—from the surface of your skin, down to the very cells of your body—that have to happen in order for you to be simply sitting here today. If your most minuscule parts haven’t given up yet,

Why should you?
( n.t. )

There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.
( dalai lama xiv )

in this story, your mother isn’t the villain.
in this story, you find a way to pick the lock, to wake up,
to climb out of the tower yourself.
in this story, you’re angry.
in this story, you meet a dragon and
it is afraid of you.
in this story, you don’t need to be saved.
in this story, your mother raised you
to recognize a prison from a home.
in this story, they don’t fall in love with you before they know you.
in this story, they aren’t better than you.
in this story, you have claws.
in this story, happily ever after has bite marks in it.
in this story, you are free and terrifying.
in this story, you get away.
in this story, you bleed.
in this story, you survive.
( caitlyn siehl )

Never confuse a single failure for a final defeat.

( f. scott fitzgerald )

If nothing else, one day you can look someone straight in the eyes and say, “But I lived through it. And it made me who I am today.“
( ian s. thomas )

I am afraid. I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of the dark, of closed-in spaces, of being alone and of getting too close. I’m afraid that I’ll never again have the life I’ve always known, my feet in the dust and my heart full. I’m afraid of being alive; I’m afraid to die.
( friday brown )

but darling,

in the end,
you've got to be
your own hero

because everybody's
busy
trying to save
t h e m s e l v e s

( c.t. )

Keep in mind that people change, but the past doesn’t.

( becca fitzpatrick )

Nobody can save you but yourself — and you’re worth saving. It’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning — this is it.
( charles bukowski )

faith, brother, not in the
gods
but in
yourself
( charles bukowski )

And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain: when you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
( haruki murakami )

We are more than the worst thing that’s ever
happened to us. All of us need to stop apologizing
for having been to hell and come back breathing.

Your bad dreams are battle scars.
What doesn’t kill you cuts you fucking deep
but scars are just skin growing back
thicker when it heals.
( clementine von radics )

I will teach my daughter not to wear her skin like a drunken apology. I will tell her ‘make a home out of your body, live in yourself, do not let people turn you into a regret, do not justify yourself. If you are a disaster it is not forever, if you are a disaster you are the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen. Do not deconstruct from the inside out, you belong here, you belong here, not because you are lovely, but because you are more than that.'
( azra t. )