OOC: About Steph. Part meme, part character development essay.
Steph has a very deep-seated lack of self-esteem. It comes from never really mattering much to anyone as a child and teenager - a career criminal father who was only interested in her when he could use her and tried to kill her when she turned against him, a junkie mother who'd send her out for pills but rarely bothered to feed her. Tim constantly tried to dissuade her from being the Spoiler; Batman fired her from being Robin. She's never felt like she measured up to expectations. It hasn't made her particularly desperate for approval or affection - it's just made her feel she's wasting people's time, and shouldn't be bothering them. Even now that she has real friends, real family, it's still hard for her to feel like she's worth their time.
A lot of what self-worth she has is - was - tied up in her self-appointed 'job' as Spoiler, and then as Robin. When she was kicking muggers, knocking out drug dealers, rescuing kids from burning buildings and certain death - then she didn't feel like a waste of space. Hence the continual training - the pushups and somersaults and jogging. If she's in training, she might be able to help someone someday, and that's really a lot of what she lives for.
She has abandonment issues. She forms attachments hesitantly, but once they're formed they hurt to break. She does know this about herself, but knowing it doesn't make it any easier to kick the habit.
Steph has scars. Lots of them. Scars are pretty much inevitable when you're a non-powered crime-fighting vigilante; even more so when you're just slightly second-rate. Most of them are fairly small or faded, but she has several that are ... distinct. A few months before her death her leg was broken in such a way that the bone stabbed through the skin above her knee and extended for several inches - yeah, that one left a mark. In the days before her death she was shot in the shoulder and tortured - horribly - with a range of things - from scalpels and knives to a power drill and a chainsaw. When she's swimming, ie in a bathing suit, it's a pretty gruesome sight - even though they're all long-healed. She tends to wear t-shirts and jeans a lot, though, which cover most of the carnage.
She's secretly kind of proud of the scars - at least, some of them. The ones gained gutter-fighting and beating up thugs, they're marks of honour, and they remind her that she's done worthwhile things in her short life. It's just the ones inflicted by Black Mask (who tortured & shot her) that aren't so good - they remind her dramatically of her catastrophic failures.
She wouldn't take cosmetic surgery if it was offered, though. They're her scars to wear, and she's earned them, whether in good or bad ways. They form a large part of her self-identity.
Steph's a very physical person, and very high-energy. She's as likely to be leaping from one booth to the next as she is to be relaxing in a corner - probably more than. She's not always happy and carefree, though, and sometimes the excess bounciness is just a way to work off the misery and frustration that threatens to overcome her. It works, usually. Endorphins are good, kids.
Steph sometimes wears green contact lenses. At least, that's the only way to explain why she randomly has green eyes sometimes and blue most of the time. Dear DC, please, some consistency in your colourists? Kthx.
Steph still hero-worships Nightwing and Batman. Even though Dick's more brother than distant hero now, and she hasn't seen Batman since she died. If Dick asked her to jump off a cliff without a de-cel cable, she'd probably do it. (This is all tied in with the lack of self-esteem. Dick is nice to her, so she'd do almost anything for him - and that goes for most people she loves.)