Batgirl

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History (part 2)

Batman (Bruce Wayne) confronted David Cain to learn the truth about the murder video. Cain, who had been sinking into alcoholism, laughed at Wayne’s denial. Yet Batman remained convinced that Batgirl wasn’t a murderer, and had somehow faked the kill.

The problem of Batgirl’s crippled skills was a more urgent one, though. Batman trained Cassandra to rebuild her fighting ability, especially her defensive skills. But everything had to be redone from scratch, and that would take years.

Batgirl felt desperate, broken and useless. She couldn’t bear the thought of staying that way for what seemed to be an eternity. She wanted to be perfect again, and her suicidal tendencies returned as she saw herself as crippled and tainted.

No super-hero name

For a time, Cassandra adopted a new identity not tied to Batman. She wore black clothing and had a monster face painted on.

Oracle soon deduced the truth. And though Cassandra was careful, operating in Gotham meant that sooner or later she’d get killed.

When Lady Shiva — likely the greatest fighter on Earth — was spotted in Gotham, Cassandra couldn’t help herself. She shadowed her. Shiva provoked her into a fight by killing the bodyguards of a young VIP who just happened to be nearby.

Shiva had come to Gotham to challenge Batgirl, but the duel was a disaster. Ms. Cain didn’t land a single blow on Shiva, and was slaughtered. But oddly, Ms. Woosan didn’t finish Ms. Cain off.

With a broken arm, shattered ribs and fractured collarbone, Cassandra doggedly confronted Shiva again. She knocked her out with a lamentable sucker punch.

Non-Batgirl costume.

No better fighter on Earth

At that point, Cassandra was facing a choice.

Cassandra had seen Shiva use the same movement-predicting senses that she used to have. Even Batman couldn’t do that. Shiva likely was the only person who could rebuild Batgirl’s combat sense, rather than teach her normal skills from the ground up.

Confronting Shiva again, Cassandra asked for training. Shiva saw what the problem was, and confirmed that she could restore her. But she’d only do so if Batgirl swore to have a duel to the death with her a year later, once she’d be back at her peak.

Cassandra agreed. She’d never kill Shiva and therefore couldn’t survive the duel – but she preferred to be perfect again for a year rather than mediocre for ten. And she still wanted to die in any case.

Cassandra rebuilt her full fighting skill with Shiva within days, and resumed being Batgirl.

However, Oracle and Batman eventually deduced what had happened.

No photos please

One of the first cases of the revitalised Batgirl was to investigate the disappearance of an Indian movie star. Anecdotally, she saw a movie for the first time in her life during that case.

Batgirl also helped during the investigation and manhunt to find the person who had nearly killed Commissioner Gordon. Then had a short team-up of sorts with Superboy (Kon-El, then in his goofier phase).

Continuing to affirm herself as a heroine, Batgirl intervened in an attempt by a US intelligence agency to eliminate one of their useful idiots. He was a marksman-for-hire who had fumbled a hit.

Taking out all armed resistance within a Federal building resulted in extensive footage of her in action. However, there were no documents to match that against. David Cain had long since erased any record of his daughter.

Still, the footage meant that Cassandra couldn’t stay at Oracle’s place. Batman took her to one of the mini-Batcaves he had installed for her.

Oracle, Batman and Batgirl eventually destroyed the footage.

Not a joke

Cassandra continued to work as Batgirl practically 24/7. She slowly created bonds with Robin and Spoiler.

She even secretly joined the all-women task force assembled by Wonder Woman to retake New York City from Circe. And later had a short team-up with Supergirl (Kara Zor-El).

Looking to prove herself, Batgirl ghosted into Arkham Asylum and challenged the Joker to a fight. But as it turned out, his body language was gibberish. Batgirl couldn’t read it at all.

However, she recalled how Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) had once defeated the Joker by using his insanity against him. She prevailed in the same way.

No future

David Cain then tricked the world into believing that Bruce Wayne was a murderer. This was a notable crisis for the Bat-squad.

During that case, Batgirl (who had never asked any personal question to her mentor) deduced that Bruce Wayne was Batman. She saw his eyes in a photo taken shortly after the murder of his parents.

While Wayne was still a fugitive, the date for Batgirl’s death duel with Shiva came up. Oracle revealed that she knew what was going on – but Cassandra paralysed her with a touch so she wouldn’t interfere.

Cassandra fought Shiva, but was clearly outmatched.

The one-sided duel ended when Shiva killed Batgirl with a single perfect blow.

History (part 3)

A year before that, the extraordinarily intuitive Shiva had realised that Cassandra was her abandoned daughter. She had spent those months preparing :

After killing Batgirl, Shiva took her to the temple. She restarted Cassandra’s heart with a punch. Then made her drink the mystical tea, resurrecting her.

Mother reads aloud…

The cult worshipping Shiva had documented her kills thorough the temple, and the corpse of their leader was still there. As Shiva expected, this prompted the restored Batgirl to attack so as to stop her.

With the tea, Cass had fully recovered within minutes – and her death had lifted some of her guilt. She thus realised that Shiva wanted to lose the fight. She sought death at Cass’ hand, just like Cass had tried to die at Shiva’s hand.

As the two fighters were battered and bloodied, Batgirl told her she knew that she wanted to die. This startled her mother enough that Batgirl could land one non-lethal blow. She knocked Shiva out before collapsing.

Shiva’s plan — to die at the hands of her daughter, whom she saw as worthy to give her the death she’d always been looking for — had been derailed. Both grandmistresses of the fighting arts were unconscious but alive.

Being the least severely mauled of the two, Cassandra recovered consciousness first – and just left. Though she presumably suspected some sort of link between Shiva and herself, she didn’t seem to realise the truth.

… child tries to understand

Even with her healing trances, Batgirl took a week to recover.

Once she was back, Batgirl provided critical expertise about the supposed murder of Vesper Fairchild by Bruce Wayne. Her deep knowledge of assassination and the martial arts were the key to unlock the case – and prove that it was a trap set by David Cain.

Meanwhile, Spoiler (Stephanie Brown) convinced Casandra to teach her better fighting skills. Sparring with Batgirl was exhausting and real painful, but Cass soon came to respect Stephanie’s determination.

They became friends, and Steph made Cass laugh for the first time in years. However, events around Spoiler later forced the pair to put their friendship on pause for months.

The picture kept will remind me

David Cain’s Vesper Fairchild machination had been meant to destroy Bruce Wayne (whom Cain knew was Batman).

But it was also to prove that he wasn’t much more of a father figure for Cassandra than he had been.

Wayne proved him wrong. Though his behaviour had indeed been awful in recent months, he turned around. During the hunt for Cain, Batman worked to apologise, reaffirm his ties with his friends and family, mend fences, and become less cold and overbearing.

Personality

Lots of things to say here, so let’s organise it all around themes.

Less-than-verbal

Originally, Cassandra couldn’t speak at all.

She eventually learned a half-dozen simple words (“stop”, “what”, “yes”, “no”, etc.), but never managed to learn to read or write.

Her brain was unable to process even a short note or a postal address. She could draw letter shapes, but couldn’t tell what they meant or how they sounded.

Slightly more verbal

After her encounter with Jeffers, Batgirl can speak. But this is neither intuitive nor pleasant. She’ll stick to the shortest, simplest possible sentences (“Explain”, “Be careful”, “This way”, “No killing”, etc.).

If she has to make longer sentences than that — say, a whole three words — she will audibly have to think about how to say the next word.

She’s less hesitant when saying “long” sentences to people she trusts, such as Oracle. But it still obviously requires effort.

Whenever possible, she’ll prefer non-verbal communication. Such as nodding, pointing, or shrugging her shoulders. For loved ones such as Batman or Oracle, she will occasionally touch them to express caring – unfailingly leaving Batman embarrassed.

Batgirl seems ashamed of these difficulties, and they leave her a lonely person since it is so hard to communicate. She is always quietly happy to have a friend near her, and is visibly (but silently) sad when they have to leave, even though little was said.

Isolated

Being such a high-speed, low-drag elite super-serious workaholic ninja doesn’t help at all. Cassandra has little to offer socially.

Furthermore, Batgirl is intimidating. Watching her move and fight is unreal. And her taciturn manner and rapid, flawless, intense pace make her come across as aloof and superior.

Even Robin (Tim Drake) was obviously creeped out by Cassandra. Especially after he saw her actually dodging bullets. He had to work to see Batgirl as something else than an inhuman, unapproachable super-assassin.

Furthermore, it’s difficult for her to perceive the qualities of most people. What she values in a person is speed, agility and fighting skill – but she has few peers in those areas.

Batgirl has to be clearly shown the existence of common ground and how she can relate to people, since she has no experience to work with.

Trauma-shaped

Much like Batman, Batgirl is defined by childhood trauma. But in her case murder is not something that was inflicted on her. It was something that she committed.

Cassandra’s guilt means that she sees herself as intrinsically bad and broken – a raised killer. And that she admires heroes for saving lives.

Meeting heroic urban vigilantes was therefore a revelation for her. It was something morally right, yet even a “wrong” person like her could do it.

Her original goal was to atone for her life, and go out in a blaze of redemption. But Batman taught her that it was the easy way out, and that she had to devote her life to confronting her past.

Guilt-ridden

After this, Batgirl no longer wished to die just to apologise for existing. But it never fully went way. It resurfaced in such situations as accepting Shiva’s offer.

Seeing what she did as a child as unspeakably monstrous, Cassandra only wants to be Batgirl 24/7. Her goal is to spend her every waking hour working, patrolling or training.

As she got more comfortable with her new life, she relaxed a bit and tentatively experimented with more normal pursuits. But she had to be prodded into it by Oracle.

After Cassandra’s death at the hands of Shiva, her guilt alleviates… a bit. It remains her motivation and an extremely powerful driver, but it’s no longer completely consuming her.

She seemingly feels that her death pushed her further on the path of atonement, though it’s… unclear.

Batgirl’s guilt also means nightmares where her friends accuse her of being a murderess.

Obsessed with perfection

Like Batman, Batgirl is obsessed with acting with machine-like perfection.

Much of her self-worth is contingent upon being a perfect weapon. This is how she used to please daddy. She might think that it’s the only thing she’s good for.

If she is deprived of her perfection, as happened with Jeffers, she becomes nothing. Life no longer is worth living.

Batgirl likes crushing her more boisterous foes by smugly doing something that looks impossible. Those who claim to be deadly masters without actually being among the very best in the world particularly get to her.

If Batgirl fails or is defeated, she can resort to childish, petty tactics to pull victory out of the jaws of defeat. It’s lamentable, but at least she won’t have to deal with having lost.

Obsessed with saving lives

Batgirl doesn’t seek perfection for perfection’s sake. And she doesn’t fight to punish criminals, or for justice, or to make a difference.

She fights to save as many lives as she can, to atone for the one she took. Her overwhelming motivation is “nobody gets killed”.

Batgirl trains extremely hard despite being instinctively perfect. Her hope is that this may allow her, one day, to save one life she otherwise couldn’t have saved.

Guilt will crush her if anybody dies on her watch. Even when it’s blindingly obvious that there was nothing she could have done about it – such as inspecting a murder scene.

She has never hesitated to take a bullet herself to protect some random murderous lowlife from friendly fire.

Killing someone would destroy Batgirl. When she seemed to accidentally slay Shadow Thief, she immediately collapsed in tears and started crying for help. She was too shocked to even check his pulse.

Parental figures

Batgirl still needs parental figures to help her build her identity.

Early on she practically worshipped Batman. She was pathetically eager to please him and be his good girl. She’s since matured, but Batman remains a clear father figure who rocks her world.

They share a deep bond over their respective childhood experiences and obsessive desire to make the world a safer place. But of course they almost never talk about it.

Oracle doggedly built her own space into Cassandra’s life. She taught her :

Cassandra eventually came to consider Oracle as a mother. But she’s too shy to ever tell her.

Cassandra utterly rejects David Cain. But she refuses what he does as a killer, not who he is. She could feel some pity for him or even try to please him in a small way… as long as he’s not present as an assassin.

Strong emotions

Though she seems carved out of solid marble and with a quasi-inhuman discipline, Batgirl is actually emotional and affectionate.

However, she doesn’t really have means to express it. And so she remains utterly mission-committed. Furthermore, her cowl entirely covers her face – emoting’s kinda hard.

While her emotions are usually difficult to perceive and interpret, they are a significant driver of what she does. In her own way she wears her heart on her sleeve, and can easily be spurred into action out of sympathy, anger, altruism, cockiness and the like.

Quotes (part 2)

(About Shiva and Batman): “Why… are… all people who… can help me… completely insane ?”

“Nobody… dies… tonight.”

Shadow Thief, fighting Batgirl: “Secret Koga-Ryu techniques ! Who taught you those ?!”
Batgirl: “You did. Just now.”

“No killing.”

(Cain is preparing a training session for a very young Cass).
Random hired thug : “Hey man, why you need the camera ? It’s a pro camera.”
Cain (smirking) : “High-speed film.”

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