Sample Post:
Things had been different lately. Harder than usual. Harsher than usual. She’d let herself go darker than usual, too. Almost as if she’d become a different person than she had been. The angst, the sex, all of it…it had been unlike her for the most part. She needed to change. To find herself again. To find that balance which had once made her one of the brighter members of the Justice League. To find that certain je nais se quoi that made Zatanna Zatara the pride of John Zatara.
Granted, that wasn’t going to happen right now, since she was stuck in some alley in Gotham City, fighting off a goddamned vampire. She swore that most vampires populated the area around Chaney’s in Metropolis. Gotham wasn’t generally their scene. Still, she’d come across the bugger, so she might as well take care of him before meeting up with Bruce.
She was cornered and the vampire had Zatanna by the throat, blocking off her vocal chords. Whoever this guy was, he knew of her. That was the only way he would have known to grab her by the throat so she couldn’t speak, or cast any spells. Sad thing was, he didn’t know her that well. Sure, in the beginning, Zatanna had had a need to speak her spells aloud and backwards to get them to work, and sure, she still did that mostly, since it helped her concentrate her spells better, but she commanded raw magickal energy now in a way that she wasn’t able to when she’d been sixteen years old and searching for her father. It was that very energy that erupted in an electrical, pale peach glow around her fists, and the very energy that Zatanna used to push the vampire off of her. She breathed in the Gotham night air deeply, disappointed but not shocked at how unfresh the air was. Her mind wandered for a moment, and she briefly wondered if maybe the Batfamily wore gas masks underneath their masks before getting back on track.
Right. Angry blood-sucking fiend from beyond the grave.
The vampire snarled – snarled – and rushed her. Bored by the attack (seriously bored. Zatanna had fought off villains far larger and scarier than the vampire), the brunette magician held out her hand and yelled, “Eripmav nrut ot tsud!” She felt a small whoosh of magickal energy bounce off of her and suddenly the vampire erupted into a cloud of dust, coating Zatanna just a little.
She grimaced and double checked her pocket to ensure that her father’s watch, the one that he had once given to Bruce, was still in her pocket. It was. Honestly, Zatanna wasn’t sure how she felt about that. The watch had mysteriously appeared at Shadowcrest the morning after a mysterious visit from what Zatanna was almost positive was the ghost of her father. That, too, had been a disturbing incident. He’d appeared out of nowhere, really, to give her a message. He’d talked to her, told her that she needed to put her life in order, that she’d changed, and that he was disappointed in her. It had been a visit that was too long in some ways and too short in others, but in the end…she’d taken his words to heart. It hadn’t been just her father’s words, of course. There was the whole slave ordeal. It had started putting things in perspective for her. It had made Zatanna look at her life differently, and she’d noticed that she’d been going down a path that she had never wanted to. That needed to change.
And it looked like her father wanted the changes to start with Bruce. She supposed it made sense. If there was anyone in the League that Zatanna had had any major problems with, it had been Bruce, and if there was anyone in the League that her father had had ties to, it had also been Bruce.
This wasn’t going to be easy. Redemption was never easy. Neither was letting go of the darkness that had enveloped her. But she had to start. She had to get back to the woman she used to be. She had to make amends, and it was going to take time. She had to meet each person she’d wronged, and she had to apologize and she had to have them help her find a way back to herself.
It was funny, she mused. The first time she had met all the members of the League, she had been searching for her father. This time she was going around the world meeting the members of the League to search for herself.
She hoped that she’d find what she was looking for.
"Ot eht evactaB!"
My Thoughts on Zatanna:
The thing that most people have forgotten about Zatanna in recent years is that, no matter what she’s been through, no matter what life’s thrown at her, she’s always managed to come up on top, still smiling, still shining, and still being bright. She’s not this angst-ridden, angry woman pissed off at the world who’s all salt and spite and vinegar without any sugar or spice. Zatanna is the same girl who, even when her father was missing when she was sixteen, went and sought out the help of Hawkman, Hawkgirl, the Atom, Batman, Robin, and Green Lantern to find her father. And she wasn’t dark or depressed or angsty over it. She was calm, level-headed, resourceful, and maybe a little over-eager, but at the end, she found her father and everything was okay. Also, Zatanna is also, quite simply, a fun, feisty, creative young woman.
Yes, there have been a lot of dark times in her life recently, but I want to see Zatanna move past that. I want her to go back to being who she originally was, or at least as close as she can get to it. So she’s going to rebuild her life, and go across the DCU, meeting and mingling with many of the heroes she was close to, and some that she wasn’t, trying to find a path back to herself so that she can once more become one of the powerful cornerstones of the magickal and heroic aspects of the DCU.
