#but for a Batgirls swap it didn't feel right

[teleportationmagic]

Reverse Batgirls AU.

Stephanie Brown starts out young and angry, wanting to put her father in prison. That doesn't change - but what does, is the name she picks up to do it. After all, Batman is... untouchable, he's justice he's power - what more can she want as a vigilante?

A whole lot, as it turns out. But still, she wears the name with pride, patrolling with Robin (Damian!) and Cassandra, making friends with the latter. Signal's farther afield, away in Bludhaven - still, he drops by now and again to play games of rooftop tag.

Cassandra has been doing work as a vigilante in all but name for a few years now. She ping pongs around - saving enough lives to have earned herself a reputation. A reputation strong enough to have made its way into circles that knew her father. These are the people who pick her name for her, seeing her father's legacy - Orphan is not a name she chooses. But after she settles in Gotham, after Bruce comes to her one day, telling her the meaning - she cannot bring herself to call it false.

Damian still ends up leaving for bigger things. A position is open, and Bruce doesn't think it needs filling - but Stephanie has lost one teacher, and for all that Cassandra is good at violence she is not very good at teaching it. He takes her under his wing, and eventually passes down a mantle.

Steph has her own mantle to pass down. "I don't know that I can tell you who you are - who your family is. But still - I don't think me or Bruce or Damian or anyone considers you an Orphan, not anymore. Batgirl isn't - she's not as good as Orphan is. But I wanted to give her to you anyways."

Cassandra takes the purple suit with a gentle sort of consideration. It's not the suit she wears, three weeks later - but the Bat is there, golden against the dark black. Bruce smiles when she steps out of the Batcave, shrouded in darkness except for the sign of her ideals, their ideals. Robin and Batgirl and Batman fly again, capes trailing through the darkness.

Steph gets to be Robin for a while - gets to carve out her own reputation. Her and Damian fight, and the reconcile, and fight again. It takes her a little bit longer to figure out why he's so angry, takes him a little longer to realize why she wants it so bad.

It helps, that Stephanie is two years older than Cassandra, but still its difficult for them to fight together. She still perceives her own presence as superfluous, and Cassandra still thinks it is her job to take bullets so no one else has to. They have a chat, under a dark alcove when Stephanie is bandaging her wounds, about pain, and the taking thereof. About balance. About how Robin was a superhero too.

Cassandra leaves Gotham, on occasion - she partners with Signal, Katana, and Black Lightning. She meets her mother there, for the first time. She won't know it, not until later, but they clash, fists against metal. This is the first time she dies, and she comes back to life with the worried eyes of her teammates.

She still gets shot. There's no gang war, but there is Roman Sionis with greedy hands and eyes, and five days followed by two clicks, two bangs. The hospital tells her she's lucky to still be standing. The word luck curls on her tongue, like something bitter.

Cassandra still tears through the city looking for her. But when she finds her, when she recovers, something settles into Stephane's skin - something bitter and angry. Cassandra can see it, even when she pretends at lightness, the jealousy and rage. Stephanie knows she sees it. This does not make things better.

Bruce takes the injury... badly. His hold tightens on all four of them. Damian and Steph take it with no small amount of anger - Bruce is not allowed in the Brown family home and Damian leaves for the Titans, again. Cassandra follows Duke to Bludhaven, pulling on his operations to set up her own. The end result is Duke's home being slowly invaded by a girl who becomes his sister.

This does not help Bruce - with no one to keep him steady, he spirals, paranoia whispering into one ear and rage into another. Tim still comes out of the woodwork, with memories of the way a dark haired kid twisted out of the hold of a particularly pushy partyguest (followed by a silent swordfight through a different hallway) inspiring a half-decades worth of trying to scratch an itch, before coming across the perfect answer.

Cassandra still leaves for answers. Bit by bit, it becomes unignorable - Shiva is her mother, undoubtedly. She limps back to Duke's home to share it between shaking sobs, and stories about all the dead men she left in the snow. He tells her in return about his father - biological and not. And he's angry on her behalf, she can see that - but still, there is warmth for her here. There is always warmth for her here. Even when she leaves burn marks on the ceiling and takes up the bathroom for hours at a time, even on those rare days where he seems so tired and she cannot do anything right - still, she has a place here. Their twin gold and black suits become fixtures of the Bludhaven skylines.

It's across the dinner table that Steph realizes she might be able to get back into the game. Her father is loud, boisterous, after leaving prison. He doesn't think she can do anything about it.

She can.

After the first time, its tempting to try a second, third. Rolling into bars with a licence that gives her a few more years, chatting up men who have lips too loose. Other times, she calls up wives, asks about schedules for a date nights or when their kids will need daycare, mapping out plans and places. In the beginning she sent these files to the GCPD, for all the good they'd do. Later, she gives them to Damian, a stack of neatly arranged notes and observations that he pours through with all the seriousness of a monk. There's something important in the first time she calls up Cass and asks her to follow up on a lead. She comes by her home later, with a hello and a fruit tart.

When she asks her what she calls herself in the field, Stephanie shrugs. She keeps a lot of different names - her own amongst them.

"The GCPD asked." Cassandra had said, one cold night. "You - you do the same thing now. That we did before. Differently, not like Robin, but still like one of us." There's a heavy pause that lingers for a moment, dull and heaving. "You should have a name."

And it might be silly, might be stupid, but Steph's been doing this long enough and seen enough plans fall apart because of the way that small details, when brought into the light, can bring a whole structure tumbling down. Spoiler is born, with a purple mask over dark fabric. It's a ceremonial thing, she'll admit, but it's the principal of the matter yanno?

Part 2 (ft. Babs) coming later. This is very much long enough.

Ages:

Duke: He starts vigilanting at 16, but as he hits his 19-20s he wants to put a little bit more distance between himself and Bruce - wants to prove himself as an individual who can bring to bear his own stregnths. His mother recovers, but his dad never really does - there's a heavy sense of grief, associating with him. They love his father, together, but while his mother does her own mourning he can't help but think it's premature. He's 20 when Batgirl comes around, and 23 when he agrees, tentatively, to work with Bruce on the outsiders.

Damian: Starts at 12, and is 16 once Batgirl starts. He's much more secure in his place, ironically, but Batman and Robin is a much lonlier job than it is in a sideways reality. Duke brings some light to the job, but once he starts trying to make his own way, things grow... quiet. And while the Titans are together for the purpose of combining their shared competencies for the sake of missions, Garth, he cannot deny that his time with them eases something in him that he didn't know was aching. After he turns 18 - after it seems all his time with Robin was actually Bruce's, after years of chafing under a heavy-handing authority he's not certain he still respects, he finally decides to create something new. Nightwing is born, from a Kryptonian legend, and he leaves Robin behind to become this new thing.

Steph starts Batgirl at twelve, and is Robin halfway through fourteen. She keeps it for two years, before it falls apart at 16. Spoiler is born a year later, when she's seventeen and looks nonthreatening, but can be the exact opposite.

Cass: Starts doing vigilante work... very young. By the time she's caught up with the Bats, she's ten and experienced, and its only a few more months before Steph joins them. She takes up Batgirl at twelve, and keeps it all the way through to twenty-one, when it finally comes time to pass it down again, to evolve into something new.

[deadletterpoets]

Whenever I hear some talk about really loving Barbara Gordon or her being their favorite Batgirl for nostalgia reasons I just know that there’s going to be something about the writing that ends up…just not right. And I am saying this as someone who has loved Barbara Gordon as Oracle but also appreciated her era as Batgirl, but doesn’t want to see her in that Batgirl role in comics or film ever again. Even in that era when she was introduced as Batgirl her personality wasn’t very…cutesy I guess? There is a certain era of Barbara’s period as Batgirl that does feel like this woman would later become the Oracle we end up knowing in comics. I feel like when she came into The Batman Animated series and later Batgirl: Year One she suddenly was written more cutesy and it has followed her ever since when writers write her as Batgirl or look to writing her as Batgirl or are fans of her as Batgirl and in turn it has affected the characters who have been in the role after her. Barbara’s tenure as Batgirl wasn’t very long (she wasn’t even the original) and her popularity died with the audience which is why she was so easy to discarded for them when they wanted to get rid of her. And I don’t feel like Batgirls is doing Barbara any favors in Batgirls either even if she is the one that the writers know more of. Because yeah these character (Cass, Steph, Babs) are getting introduced to a new audience but when it feels like you can just swap all their personalities with each other like it’s not good? It’s like loving a character but loving the most shallow aspect of them and focusing on the most shallow aspect of them. I remember the editor (who is currently also the editor of Nightwing) talking about how they wanted this book to be like Spider-Man into the Spider-verse but it feels like when you try to force something to be something else you aren’t being true to like what should come naturally. The same editor as said similar things about Nightwing and about it being a book they wanted to enjoy which is yeah… But Shadow of a Batgirl is a great example of writers writing with love and who weren’t forcing something to be like something else, and it actually came out great.

Yeah, I tend to focus on Cassandra Cain specifically, but I don't think Batgirls has written any of the characters well I just don't have as much knowledge for Steph and Babs to proclaim it every time. For me especially with Babs there's been a consistent want to keep her from progressing as a character. Her new progression went Batgirl ->Oracle->Batgirl and they saw no issue with it and many new fans came in during that time so when people were asking for Oracle proper and either Cass or Steph to take the reigns back as Batgirl it was met with heavy resistant from DC and fans. Hell I still see people calling Cass Orphan and Steph Spoiler. They'd rather nobody be Batgirl than it not be Babs.

Anyway, I'm aware of the editor. I didn't hear the Spider-Verse part, but I do know that she was a HUGE Burnside fan and basically wanted Batgirls to be for Cass and Steph what Burnside was for Babs, which IMO fucking sucks, but also based on the reaction they are succeeding.

Also it's weird to me cause Batgirls is clearly meant to be a book that's supposed to be for a casual/new audience, but it doesn't read well for a new audience cause for the first few issues you had to have read Fear State and they barely went into who these characters were, not even caring to actually *introduce* them and a quick summary of their origin or their journey to being a hero and Batgirls. So it only worked if you'd been following these characters for a long time. Idk it was weird to be told Batgirls is on "Best Comics of the year" list, but I think ppl assume cause I talk about how much I don't like it I'm part of some bigger group of people, but in actuality I'm in a small circle and Batgirls is somehow continuing to succeed despite no one involved seemingly caring about these characters.

And yeah Babs wasn't the first Batgirl and I remember ppl kept asking for Bette or even Tiffany or Kate to show up in the book and honestly, people after reading a few issues I think wanting them to poorly write more of the Bat women in this world just seems cruel.

READ SHADOW OF THE BATGIRL