[OOC] Babylon Wood Application
She thinks that no one wants to understand her;
It doesn't really matter what she needs.
It was like a sort of art
Learning how to play the part
Of the girl that everybody thinks they see.
The Player
User Name/Nick: Sara
User LJ: lady_sarai
AIM/IM: MissCiss28
E-mail: ladysarai55@gmail.com
Other Characters: N/A
The Character
Character Name: Cissie King-Jones
Character Journal: notarrowette
Canon: DC Comics, specifically Young Justice
Age: 18
From When?: Okay, so Cissie is sort of in limbo canonically, as she hasn't appeared regularly since Young Justice, which ended in 2003; she has had guest appearances in Teen Titans and the Wonder Girl mini-series and has been mentioned in passing in other places, but there's really no canon on what she's doing currently. Her last big canon role was in the Wonder Girl mini-series, where she was horribly out of character. (The writer admitted he only included her as a shout-out to fans and didn't consider the fact that he was ignoring 40 issues/3+ years of her canon in the process.) Because I want to play with an older Cissie than we last saw in canon, I’ll be making her an AU character so I can create a history for her between her last canon appearance and current canon for the rest of the DC universe. BASICALLY, this is a long-winded way of saying that her canon point is one that exists only in the AU I’m creating, which I’ll get into more in the history section.
That said, Cissie is in her first year of college in Metropolis, and has made "friends" with a questionable crowd. They seem nice, and include Cissie in social events, and she thinks they're her friends, but they're more like those friends who are nice to you because you share your snacks or help them with their homework or because you're the only one with a car. You're just too grateful to have friends to question their friendship, even if the tiny voice in the back of your head says 'hey, they only invite me when they need me.' In Cissie's case, she has celebrity. She's a gold medal Olympian and was on a television show; people recognize her, and while she doesn't really like the attention, her "friends" do. At the point she's taken to the Wood, one of her "friends" has given her a fake ID and they have plans to go to an exclusive night club. Cissie's not sure that she wants to go; it's a 21+ club, her grades are slipping and she needs to work on a paper, she's been skipping archery practice, and she overheard some of those "friends" talking about how they need her to come so they can get into the club. If she goes, there will be drinking and drugs; she'll let herself be pressured into drinking. It'll be easier to "go with the flow" and do what makes her friends happy, what wins their approval; if she makes them happy, they'll stick around. They'll continue to include her. When she's out having fun, dancing, drinking and having a good time, it doesn't matter that they're just using her. Maybe another time they go out, someone will hand her a pill, or a joint; maybe there will be something slipped into her drink. The more this happens, the less she'll care. Going to the Wood at this point removes her from the slippery slope she's starting down.
Abilities/Powers: Cissie has no special powers, but she is an exceptional athlete, having won a gold medal for archery in the Olympics at age 15. She has competed in national and world events, training at this level for the last several years. She practices for several hours daily. There is a possibility that her eyesight is better than it should be--when she was three, she was able to see birds in a tree several houses away, while her mother needed binoculars to see them. She also has excellent aim; at the same age, she got hold of a set of darts and proceeded to hit the bulls-eye every time. Her mother enrolled her in multiple classes as a child, including archery, gymnastics, ballet, etiquette and multiple martial arts disciplines. As a result, she is agile, coordinated and able to hold her own in a hand-to-hand combat situation. She is also trained in emergency first-aid and acted as a field medic during a war on the planet Apokalips. In the end, however, she is just a well-trained human being.
Power Limitations: N/A
Inventory
Blue skinny jeans
Black leather belt
Red tunic sweater
Black pea coat
Gray and red tartan cashmere scarf
Black stockings
Black mid-calf boots with 1" heels
Watch with black leather band
Gold chain bracelet
Gold necklace with an arrow pendant
Gold hoop earrings
Little black purse, containing:
1 iPhone
Pink earbuds
Lipstick
Mascara
Keys
Travel-sized hairbrush
Small bottle of hand sanitizer
Hand lotion
Pink wallet, containing:
$54 and change
University of Metropolis ID card
Driver's License
1 fake ID identifying her as 21 year old Cecilia King
2 credit cards
Personality:
Cissie is friendly, optimistic and out-going. She is very intelligent and has a good sense of humor, though she is sometimes sarcastic. She cares deeply about others, and has a great sense of responsibility. Cissie wears her heart on her sleeve--she does not hide her emotions very well, particularly around people who know her. She is usually very open and compassionate; she is easy to talk to and a good listener. She is passionate and fierce about the people and things she cares most about. She is extremely loyal and protective of her friends, who she considers her family, especially the ones she met in Young Justice. She will do anything for them, and her most violent and passionate moments are always in response to her loved ones being threatened. If you really want to get a rise out of Cissie, screw with her friends.
However, friends are Cissie's weak point as well. She yearns for the kind of feelings of belonging and purpose that she had when she was a member of Young Justice, and has started down a dangerous path in an effort to escape the abandonment and uncertainty she's been feeling for some time now. The first friends she ever made were in Young Justice; before she met them, she was always lonely. She had a hard time making friends as a child because her mother home schooled her and she was pushed to be the best in everything she did; no one wants to be friends with the girl who always comes in first place. But Young Justice was her refuge, and her friends were the family she'd always wanted.
Unfortunately, when YJ disbanded, Cissie slowly lost her friends. They drifted apart, and Cissie was left feeling abandoned, forgotten and alone. She felt replaced when a new archer joined her friends on their new team. Cissie has a problem with jealousy. When she quit the team and Anita (Empress) joined, Cissie was miserable and rude to her for the longest time. There were times she was downright cruel, feeling that her place with her friends was threatened. The biggest targets of Cissie's jealousy lately are Speedy, the blonde archer who "replaced" her as team archer, and Kara, aka Supergirl. Kara took Cissie's place as Cassie's best friend, even while Cissie and Cassie were roommates. It hurt to watch her best friend choose to spend time with someone else. As much as Cassie's pestering to become a hero again hurt, it hurt almost as much when she stopped pestering her.
Now, Cissie feels resentful and abandoned by those friends. She is jealous and bitter about being left behind, and has deep-seated abandonment issues; her default assumption is that if someone says they are going to call her, they won't. Two of the most painful moments in her life were when Kon and Bart died, and no one called to tell her personally. She was volunteering and in a hospital during the Crisis when Kon died and it was broadcast on the news, and when Bart died, she also saw it on the news. She was not even able to attend Kon's funeral as a civilian, and she holds a deep resentment about this. She loved both of them like brothers, and losing them hurt her as much as it hurt everyone else, but she feels they don't realize or understand this. She was also not told when they came back to life, instead learning about it from newspapers again. As a result, Cissie is surprised when people include her and want to be around her, and completely shocked if people make an effort to include her or stay in touch over time or distance. She is also never certain if people are being friends with her for ulterior motives, but she does her best not to think about this. Overhearing her so-called friends confirm they basically want her around for her celebrity status was a big blow.
Cissie has a deep drive to win the approval of others. It bothers her when people are upset with her, which stems from her mother. Her relationship with Bonnie King-Jones is incredibly complicated, and affects her relationships with everyone else, in that she feels a need to make the people she loves proud of her. She can either be afraid to let them down and push herself to be perfect, or if she is hurt and upset, she can go to the other extreme and try to prove how much she doesn't need them.
Cissie has intense "Mom issues." She spent fourteen years of her life doing everything she could to please her mother and make her happy, to be the best because that's what Mom wanted. She was a "yes, Mommy" girl. When her mother's custody was revoked, Cissie was set completely adrift; she didn't know what to do with herself. She barely knew how to function without someone telling her what to do and when to do it. She flailed and was very angry and bitter with her mother, blaming her for losing custody and for forcing her dreams on her. She resented her therapist, Marcy Money, and eventually decided that instead of never picking up a bow again (which was her original idea), she would become the best superhero ever to spite her mother. She would do it best on her own. It took her a long time to get over her anger, though her mother didn't help. Bonnie needed therapy of her own. Even after they finally repaired their relationship, Cissie continued to feel she wasn't good enough for her mother. She resents her mother for being in a stable relationship with Anita's guardian and for being a better mother to Anita's de-aged parents than she was to her. Despite forgiving her mother for her childhood, she still wishes she could have had a normal one.
Speaking of her childhood, Cissie also has significant father issues. She was close with her father when she was little; he was the one who tucked her in at night, who scared away the monsters and read to her. She has "dead dad" issues, as he died when she was five, and she spent a lot of her childhood believing that if he hadn't, her mother would not have put her through the things she did. Finding out he is not her biological father shattered her, especially when she found out who her biological father is--Green Arrow. When she was a little girl, Cissie idolized Green Arrow, wanting to be just like him. She wanted him to find her and take her away from her mother, making him his new sidekick, the new Speedy. She grew out of this, but still holds some irrational resentment toward Green Arrow for never rescuing her from her childhood; now she resents Ollie for not finding her when her mother lost custody and she was made a ward of the state.
After being removed from her mother's care, Cissie bonded with Marcy, her therapist. She saw Marcy as a second mother-figure, and one a lot more stable, positive and loving than her own mother. Marcy became the one steady figure in Cissie's life; she was an adult she could talk to about anything, and she loved her deeply. Unfortunately, Marcy was tortured and brutally murdered. Cissie snapped and suffered a psychotic break. She sought vengeance, driven by a desire to hurt the people responsible as much as Marcy and as much as she was suffering. There is nothing Cissie regrets more than that night in the woods and what she tried to do. She feels very strongly about protecting and helping others, which is what forced her to give up heroing after. Cissie believes strongly that there are consequences to actions, and you have to be willing to accept those consequences. She lost control, and acted in anger and pain, and as far as she's concerned, what she did was unforgiveable.
Because of that incident, Cissie does not entirely trust herself. She is terrified of losing her self-control, especially in a situation where others may be hurt by her actions. It is her biggest fear; she was given a glimpse of a world in which she was a villain who set a circus on fire and murdered people without remorse, and it haunts her, because she feels the line between vigilante and villain is a thin one. She can be terribly insecure, especially when it comes to those closest to her. She holds herself to high standards and feels her friends must do the same. She has a temper and tends to speak before thinking. When she realizes she has been in the wrong, Cissie either apologizes or stews, beating herself up until something forces her hand. She has a tendency to repress until she snaps--and then be very hard on herself for snapping. She is slow to forgive those who have betrayed or hurt her or her friends, but is slowest to forgive herself.
Cissie is very strong-willed and determined. When she puts her mind to something, she throws herself into it whole-heartedly and sticks by her decision, even when her friends constantly ask her to change her mind. The best example of this is her decision to quit heroing. She found other ways to help people, by becoming a medic and volunteering, but she doesn't feel she can ever go back to being a hero, because she can never trust herself not to cross the line and hurt anyone who hurts her friends or family. She blames this decision for losing her Young Justice friends, but is too proud to try to repair those friendships when she feels they have abandoned her.
Now, Cissie throws herself into her social life, driven by a desire to fit in and feel included. She chases the feeling of belonging and family she felt with Young Justice, but she can never fully open up with new friends, because she can't reveal anything about her past as a superhero; it leaves her with sixteen years she can't talk about. Any friendships she makes are only superficial, even though she tells herself they aren't, and she's okay with that.
Cissie's deepest fears are that she will snap and cross the line between hero and villain again; she is terrified of her own lack of self-control, and she's afraid that people around her don't trust her either. She wants nothing more than to be worthy of love and affection, and for people to stick around, but she doesn't believe people will. Her drive for approval and yearning to belong are what have driven her to lose sight of what's really important and made her feel like becoming a vapid party girl is okay. She has learned how to pretend to be okay, to mold herself into what other people want her to be, and to accept what she needs to do to keep her friends interested in her and prevent them from leaving her behind, even though these friends are not the ones she should be trying to keep in her life. She has no idea what to do with herself, with her future, now that the ambitions her mother had for her as a superhero are not viable. More than anything, Cissie is insecure and alone and lost, even if she doesn't realize it.
History
Canon History:
Cissie’s mother, Bonnie King, was a bronze-medal Olympic archer who decided to become the vigilante "Miss Arrowette" after seeing Green Arrow on the news. Unfortunately, she wasn't very successful at it. For the purpose of this AU, Bonnie and Ollie (Green Arrow) had an affair during this time. Eventually, Ollie grew bored and Bonnie grew frustrated with his self-centered, egotistical ways. When she discovered she was pregnant, she tried to tell him, but he wouldn't stop talking about himself long enough to listen, so she didn't bother to tell him and left. Soon after, she met and married Bernell Jones, who loved her and didn't care that she was carrying another man's child. He even put his name on Cissie's birth certificate. Things seemed rosy, but unfortunately Bonnie was forced to quit archery shortly after their marriage when she was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. Cissie had a blessed early childhood, raised by a mother and father who loved her. If Bonnie could be a little overzealous, letting her daughter play with darts at the age of three, Bernell knew how to keep her in line and give her some perspective, allowing their daughter to be a child. Sadly, when Cissie was five years old, Bernell died of shellfish poisoning, ending that period of Cissie's life.
With the life insurance money from her husband's death, Bonnie became obsessed with molding Cissie into the new Arrowette. She wanted her daughter to have all the opportunities she never had, so that Cissie could be the best and brightest. She was the definition of an overbearing Stage Mother living vicariously through her child. She taught her daughter archery, enrolled her in every kind of class available and taught her how to solve crimes. Bonnie was obsessed with making Cissie the most famous superhero of her time and everything she did was aimed at making this happen. She even pulled Cissie out of kindergarten to home school her, because there was no way to fit all of her classes into her week if she had to schedule them around school, never mind include time for practicing.
When Cissie was fourteen, Bonnie took her on one of her first missions, where Cissie met Bart Allen, then known as Impulse, and his mentor Max Mercury, members of the Flash family. The mission was a success, but barely. Cissie was captured and Impulse had to rescue her. Max Mercury was appalled at the danger Bonnie was placing Cissie in, seeing that she was a normal human girl with no powers, and contacted Social Services. After a court battle, Bonnie lost custody of Cissie, who became a ward of the state of Pennsylvania and was enrolled in a boarding school rather than put in foster care. (Oh, comics.)
Cissie was placed in the Elias School for Girls, where she eventually grew very close to her therapist. At first, she was angry and resentful of her mother and decided never to be a hero again-until it occurred to her that the best way to hurt her mother would be by becoming a better Arrowette without her. She threw herself into the superhero life. Shortly after returning to heroing, Cissie encountered a villain called Harm, who caught one of her arrows and threw it back at her, impaling her shoulder. Injured, she turned to Impulse for help. This was how became a member of Young Justice, making her first real friends-Robin, Superboy, Impulse, Secret, and her best friend, Wonder Girl. She was happy, possibly for the first time in her life. She enjoyed finally going to school, loved her friends and was being Arrowette. She even began to realize that she was heroing for the wrong reason and began doing it more out of a desire to help people and be a good person than as a means for revenge.
Then her therapist, who had become her psuedo mother figure, was brutally murdered. Marcy's ex-fiancé came to her office with a friend who videotaped while he verbally abused her and shot her once in both legs, and then through the heart. Cissie returned to school after a weekend saving the world with Young Justice to find her school, her haven from all bad things, crawling with police officers and media. When she went to find out what happened, she sneaked into the school and wound up witnessing the videotape of Marcy's torture and murder while the police watched it. Grieving and angry, Cissie hunted Marcy's murderers through the woods, terrorizing them and intent on revenge. She used a Cryo-Arrow to freeze an angry bear and tied the friend to a tree so he would be mauled when the bear thawed, and went after Marcy's murderer. She cornered him and shot an arrow through each of her legs, mimicking Marcy's murder. She aimed a third arrow at his heart, and let it go. She would have killed him, had Superboy not shown up and caught the arrow just in the nick of time. He gave the arrow back to Cissie, giving her a second chance to make the right decision. She did, and walked away, collapsing in the woods in tears.
Once Cissie recovered from her shock, she was horrified by what she had nearly done and how easy it would have been. She decided it was too dangerous for her to continue being Arrowette, and quit heroing-and Young Justice. She couldn't trust herself not to make the wrong choice and hurt someone again. Her friends did not support her decision, except for Robin (Tim Drake), but their reactions were nothing compared to her mother's. Bonnie slapped her when she found out. Cissie even gave up archery entirely for a while, until her mother tricked her into going to an Olympic qualifying competition. She subsequently competed and won a gold medal, beginning her new career as a competitive archer and celebrity.
After the Olympics, her mother hired an agent to handle Cissie's career, getting her deals with sponsors and merchandise. Cissie put up with it because it provides her with an income and money for college. This also eventually landed her a role on DC's version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, called Wendy the Werewolf Stalker. (I like to think she played their Tara; their version of Willow had a crush on her character.) She also fought off werewolves with Nair while she was filming, but the important point of that story was that she was put in a position where she seemingly had to shoot a werewolf and she chose another way. It was the first time she was really in a combat situation since quitting heroing, and she didn't freeze up or take the easy way out by killing the werewolves.
Cissie continued to visit her friends at Young Justice, occasionally joining them on missions. When YJ disbanded, she was worried that she would lose contact with her friends. This was not the case at first, as Cassie (Wonder Girl) became her roommate at Elias, though she spent less time with them after they joined the Teen Titans. Things changed over time. Kon (Superboy) was killed, Tim (Robin) went on a year-long trip around the world, and Bart aged rapidly and became the third Flash, cutting himself off from his friends. Cassie became angry and withdrawn, beginning to spend more time with her new friend Supergirl than with Cissie. Soon after Tim’s return from his trip, Bart was murdered. About a year later, Bart and Kon came back from being dead.
AU History
As I said before, Cissie's been in limbo as far as canon's concerned for some time now. Picking up where canon left her at the end of Young Justice, Cissie continued going to school at Elias, getting good grades, making friends and generally having a decent "normal" life. But there was a hole where Arrowette belonged, and where her friends had been. She grew increasingly discontent, especially as Elias went co-ed and a new principal came along, displacing the woman Cissie had looked up to for years; here was another strong female figure leaving Cissie's life. It was shortly after this that Cassie, Cissie's best friend, came to Elias as a student and Cissie's roommate.
The advice all colleges give about not rooming with your best friend? Turns out to be very sound advice. Instead of growing closer, being roommates made Cissie and Cassie grow apart. It didn't help that Kon died and Cassie withdrew into herself after his death, going so far as to join a cult to resurrect him and then becoming friends with Supergirl because she was a Kryptonian too. Cissie grew increasingly bitter and jealous as Cassie and Kara (Supergirl) bonded, feeling a little more hurt every time Cassie referred to Kara as her "best friend."
At the same time things with Cassie were deteriorating, Cissie was losing touch with all of her other friends as well. Kon was dead, Bart was an adult who avoided his friends, Greta was obsessed with school and boys, Anita was raising her de-aged parents, Tim was first on a trip around the world and out of touch for an entire year and then kept largely to himself. Her friends, the first friends she had ever had, her family, were all out of her reach. To make matters worse, they formed a new team, the Teen Titans-and invited the new Speedy, Green Arrow's blonde teenage sidekick, to join as the new team archer. Well, technically Speedy joined before Kon died, but. The point stands.
And then Bart died. When Kon died, Cissie was volunteering at a hospital during the Crisis, and heard about it on a newsfeed. When Bart died as the Flash, she walked into the common room of her dormitory and saw a special news bulletin about his death. She had to attend his funeral as a civilian; at least she was able to go, despite not being able to even say hello to her costumed best friends-Kon's funeral was reserved for heroes only, and Cissie King-Jones was not invited. In the year that followed Bart's death, Cissie's friendships continued to deteriorate. Her friends were losing themselves and each other, and there was nothing she could do. Her efforts to stay in touch didn't amount to much, and she finally gave up.
Cissie continued school and her archery career, and did more guest appearances on Wendy and publicity events for her agent. She was successful, and appeared to be happy, even though she was privately miserable and terribly lonely. She made friends easily, being friendly and cheerful and a bit of a celebrity, but they were never real friendships. Cissie didn't know how to be normal, despite how good she was at pretending. She had never been normal. She had been a home schooled superhero for sixteen years, and had to relearn how to exist in society, and it left a hole. It made it very hard for Cissie to really connect with people, despite her desperate yearning for friends. She could never really open up to anyone, which made it hard to have deep friendships.
Cissie graduated high school and accepted an athletic scholarship to the University of Metropolis. That summer, Bonnie moved in with her boyfriend, the legal guardian of Anita, one of Cissie's YJ friends. While they were packing up Bonnie's house for the move, Cissie found a copy of her parents' marriage license and her birth certificate. She had never known that her mother was pregnant when they were married, and she asked Bonnie about it. Bonnie sat her down and told her the truth: Bernell Jones was not her biological father. Oliver Queen, Green Arrow, was. Cissie was devastated by this. She's still working through how she feels about this, and so far has no desire to meet her biological father or have any kind of relationship with him.
Meanwhile, Cissie began college. She moved into a new dormitory for the first time in years and had a new roommate, Meghan, who was thrilled to have a famous person to room with. They had a rocky start as roommates, as Cissie was mainly interested in doing what she did in high school-maintaining her good grades and focusing on archery. But Meghan was more interested in her social life, hanging out with friends and partying late into the night. The first month or two of college were rough; Cissie had a hard time making friends, and the roommate situation made things worse. In October, Meghan's friends pressured her to ask her "famous" roommate to come with her to their Halloween party. Cissie declined at first, but changed her mind. She was tired of being left out and it was nice to be invited. One night of fun wouldn't hurt.
Cissie made "friends" with some of the girls at the party; they began to talk to her in classes, sit with her at meals, invite her to hang out with them. Meghan started being friendlier with her and they finally had things to talk about. Cissie had friends, and she was starting to feel happy. She wasn't exactly thrilled with all the partying and drinking, but she was being included. If she had less time to study, or had to skip a practice session every once in a while, well, it wasn't the end of the world. One drink wasn't a big deal. Two couldn't be much worse. If she got drunk every once in a while, it was totally normal, right? Everyone did it. Besides-her mother, her coach, her professors, her old friends-none of them noticed a thing. Or cared.
Right before Cissie is brought to the Wood, she has plans to attend another party with her friends, at a new nightclub. Meghan gave her a new fake ID so they can get in, and she overheard some of her "friends" talking about how they need her to come so they can get in at all; she's famous, so she'll get in and they're with her, so they'll get in too. She considers not going, but… well. Her friends would be disappointed.
First Person Sample: Linky McLink!
Prose Sample: Oh hey, another link!
Special Notes: I have no special notes, except: You win.