A_Facility Application
Jun. 12th, 2012 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
everydaymagicOOC Information:
Name: Nekky
Age: 22
AIM: xnecronomical
MSN: NA
Y!M: NA
E-MAIL: nekkyx@gmail.com
Are you new? If not, list your current characters: Tommy Shepherd, Bucky Barnes, and Apollo.
IC Information:
Name: Zatanna Zatara
Fandom: DC Comics
Timeline: Zatanna #16, just after she gets home to Shadowcrest and flops down to sleep. Rude awakening much.
Age: Mid-thirties to early forties.
Appearance: Zatanna looks a bit younger than she is. She's quite pretty, with blue eyes and wavy black hair to about mid-back, and she often dresses fashionably and wears a touch of tasteful makeup. She rarely looks less than put together when she's in public. She's about 5'7" and curvy (what most would call "stacked"), fit from martial arts training and from a very on-the-go life. Her wardrobe varies a lot since she has a literally massive closet and magics up outfits sometimes, but in general, her stage outfit and most of her formal evening wear includes a top hat of some sort, as it's kind of her signature. Her fashion sense is very sophisticated and playful - once she magics up an evening dress whose pattern apparently contains real stars shooting across the fabric. Even her nightgowns are usually pretty.
Stage outfit.
Abilities: Zatanna's powers are both extremely simple, in that most of it just requires she say some words backwards, but also very complicated because... Well, it's difficult to put a limit on that. Zatanna is part Homo Magi, a naturally magical race of humans, on her mother Sindella's side, and her father was a powerful magician himself, so magic is very much in her DNA. She's considered one of the strongest magicians in the DCU. Some things she's done with her magic in the past:
♠ Elemental manipulation; such as water, weather, fire, plants, etc.
♠ Telepathy; reading minds, erasing memories, taking control of someone's mind, etc. These spells are tricky and don't always go as planned, such as when some members of the League voted to erase Dr. Light's memories after he assaulted Sue Dibny. Erasing his memories was something she could do no problem (she wiped some of Bruce Wayne's memories, also), but they voted to change Light, to steer him toward good. When Zatanna tried this, it accidentally diminished his intelligence. She also attempted to steer Catwoman toward the good side also, but that time it didn't affect her intellect. With her spotty history, guilt, and the mistrust others show her, she doesn't do any of this lightly.
♠ Flight; she can use magic to fly, but it takes some concentration.
♠ Teleportation; if she has some idea of where she's going, she can just magic herself and others there.
♠ Illusions and dispelling illusions; illusion magic is easy for her. When Batman was magically given Superman's powers, she used an illusion of his parents to lure him in when he went insane.
♠ Force fields; she can throw up magic barriers, and cast a specific spell to make her invulnerable to other magic.
♠ Healing; Zatanna can heal herself and others with magic. During an incident with the Joker, she's shot in the throat, and heals her injury herself by writing backward in blood. She's also helped heal others, but her powers seem more potent on herself.
♠ Transmutation; Zatanna can change one element into another, or change the shape of an object through magic. Once she changed an entire audience into vampire bats to attack the Joker, and then changed them back and made sure they wouldn't remember it.
♠ Conjuring; she seems to be able to effortlessly conjure up things like clothes and small items.
♠ Knowledge of the occult; she's very knowledgeable about just about every sort of magic and mystic art that exists in the DCU. She can travel the mystic planes and across dimensions, see spiritual and magical entities, manipulate many kinds of magic, extract or move souls, tap in and see magical events happening, etc. She's... basically DC's catch-all deus-ex-machina magician.
♠ Premonitions; Zatanna occasionally gets mystic visions of future events. It happens rarely, and when it does, she isn't given enough information to actually do anything about it, making it more of a curse than a power - such as the time she predicted Barbara Gordon's eventual paralyzation, but didn't know when, where or how it would happen. She couldn't do anything about it, and if she tried, she could have made it much, much worse.
Basically Zatanna is a walking plot device because that's how DC rolls. Her more mundane skills include:
♠ Stage magic and illusions
♠ Basic (as in she's no match for, say, someone from the Batfamily) hand-to-hand combat and martial arts
♠ Improvisation with backwards speech magic
♠ Multilingual - English, Spanish, and Mnemonic Incantation (backwards speech)
♠ One hell of a fashion sense. Shut up this is a skill.
Despite being one of the strongest magicians in the DCU, however, she does have her weaknesses, notably:
♠ She needs to be able to speak, for the most part. If her mouth is covered, her vocal cords are damaged, her throat is injured, etc, she cannot cast unless she does so by writing in blood, which strengthens her magic, but it's something she only does in drastic circumstances. If she's too injured to focus, she can't even cast with blood.
♠ Rule of karma. Magic used with evil intentions is likely to come back and bite you in the ass.
♠ Magic level. If someone casts a spell on someone, and their skill is equal to or greater than Zatanna's, she can't reverse it herself. It's hard to win a fight with a magician whose magic is stronger than hers. Sometimes enchantments against magical beings also prevent her from entering or dispelling spells, thus requiring a human to perform the task.
♠ Basic human weaknesses. She has to heal herself with magic if she's injured, but if she can't get a spell out, she's just as vulnerable as anyone else.
♠ Her spells can be interrupted. Once, Deathstroke incapacitates her with a blow to her liver, inciting vomiting.
Personality: Zatanna has grown a lot. She's the daughter of two powerful magicians, and a descendant of Leonardo da Vinci. Also in her family tree are Nostradamus, famed alchemist Nicholas Flamel, and even a Lord of Atlantis, which is rather a lot to live up to. She had some confidence issues early in her life, most notably some time after her reputation and relationships were tarnished by her mindwipe of Dr. Light. She even lost her powers for a short time because of this lack of confidence, though she eventually worked through it and regained her magical abilities. There was also a period before that where she grew unsure of her path in life and temporarily gave up her father's style of magic with backwards incantations to take up something more similar to her mother's style of magic. She eventually went back to the mnemonic incantation, though. It took time and working through her problems but eventually she grew from an awkward teenager, to a wandering young adult, to the confident, strong-willed woman she is today. She's left her problems in her past, learned from her mistakes, and tried to be better and mend her broken relationships. She's a brilliant performer with one hell of a stage presence; she doesn't really get stage fright, so being the center of an audience's attention doesn't bother her, and she loves stage magic. It's how she makes her living, after all.
The mindwipe incidents effected her greatly through her career, not only her confidence but her self-respect and her relationships with her friends. Zatanna inherited her father's penchant for heroism, and she's always tried to do the right thing, but the League wasn't exactly a great influence on that front all the time. She's worked with the Justice League for a long time protecting Earth and taking care of magical threats in the place of her father, but some of them found other uses for her powers. She says herself she didn't want to tinker with the minds of Dr. Light and Catwoman, but especially with Dr. Light, it seemed like the only thing they could do - he had raped Sue Dibny, and was threatening to go after the wives of other Leagers; trying to magically shift him toward good seemed like the only thing they could do since just wiping his memory wouldn't stop him completely. She feels incredibly guilty about that, and about wiping some of Bruce's memories, and about what she did to Selina. They seemed like the only option at the time but she knows it was wrong, and she tries to make up for it to Bruce and Selina. She tries to be an honest, good person; this shows especially with Selina. She owns up to what she did to her, admits it readily and apologizes and admits she was wrong to do such a thing, even though Selina didn't ask first and Zatanna then owed her favors. It was still the right thing to do and that's what she cares about.
Essentially, she's a good, honest person who cares about people, even if she has a sort of spotty moral track record. She admits she isn't perfect. She makes mistakes, but she owns up to them, learns from them, and tries to be better.
In her day to day, she's a strong, confident, independent woman. She's single and has incredibly bad luck in love (most boyfriends don't work out for very long, if at all, and her love for childhood friend Bruce Wayne is forever unrequited), but she doesn't let that get her down. She carries on, no matter what. Like with Bruce, she doesn't let her love for him compromise who she is and what she wants out of life. They care for each other quite a bit, despite their obvious trust issues stemming from Zatanna wiping his memories of the Dr. Light incident, and they could have had something, but Bruce refuses to let her in and Zatanna refuses to settle, so it'll never be. She still loves him, still occasionally dreams about marrying him, but it doesn't keep her from dating and trying to meet Mr. Right. She's not one of those superheroes that lets being a superhero completely keep her from having a personal life. She knows what she wants and she goes for it.
Because of this, she sometimes also is a bit selfish. Zatanna tries to be a good person, and she is, but she has her flaws just like everyone else - namely an addiction to magic and using it to make her life easier, even if it means inconveniencing others, such as magically silencing annoying talkers at a movie theater and etc. However, she won't use her magic for obviously criminal acts, like magicing up money or to get out of paying for things. She believes in the law of karma, in that if you do something terrible with magic it'll come back to bite you in the ass.
She's a bit of a daddy's girl. She loves both her parents, but since she didn't know her mother for much of her life, her father was the one who raised her. Her foes have often used John Zatara's ghost against her to catch her off her guard, so even in death he could be considered a weakness of hers, and she hates her father being used like that. She's also a very feminine person and likes some typical "girly" things despite not being afraid of getting down and dirty in a fight. She loves clothes, and has a massive two-story closet full of designer clothes, hundreds of pairs of shoes, and more top hats than you can shake a stick at. She's also relatively unphased by "weird" happenings, since she sees "weird" stuff a lot as a prominent member of the magical community. Hell, she's got a real mummy guarding her library at Shadowcrest, the ancestral family home. She's got one hell of a sense of humor about her life in general, actually - her cell phone's ringtone is "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" and her doorbell plays "Abracadabra".
She also cares deeply for people. When she got a vision of Barbara Gordon's eventual paralyzation, she knows she can't stop it from happening, but she does everything she can to give Babs at least one good night to remember before it happens, and she and Diana take her out dancing. Family is also important to her, namely her cousin Zachary. She clears her busy schedule to go see his magic show, and despite his much less starry career, she appears with him sometimes doing joint shows. And she tries to make a difference in the world, serving with the League to protect people.
Essentially, Zatanna Zatara is a hero.
History: Zatanna Zatara was born to magician Giovanni "John" Zatara and his wife, member of the Homo Magi race, Sindella Zatara. Their daughter was destined to be magical with parents like that, and she was - she was born with her mother's talent for magic. She grew up with just her father, however - her mother faked her death and returned to the Homo Magi's secret city in Turkey, leaving Zatanna and John to themselves. Zatara was a good father to his little girl, traveling the world with her and teaching her to use her natural magic. He also taught her stage magic, escapology, and signed her up for martial arts lessons. They were based in Gotham City, and Zatara was good friends with Thomas and Martha Wayne, Bruce Wayne's parents. Zatara often got together with Thomas Wayne and did charity magic shows for children and the like. Because of their fathers being friends, Zatanna and Bruce knew each other as children, and were friends. They would meet again a bit later in life when Zatara taught Bruce escapology, a skill he'd often use as Batman.
Her childhood on the stage shaped her life. She sometimes performed as her father's assistant during shows, even as a child. On one occasion, she witnessed a washed-out puppeteer murder someone; the puppeteer, Oscar Hampel, then tried to kill her, but her father intervened and locked the murderer into the body of one of his puppets, Stringleshanks. This would give Zatanna a phobia of marionettes for years. Later as a young teenager, after getting braces, she once stopped a mugger in a mall with a Speak n Spell (She couldn't talk because of said braces.) and magicked up a cage out of her braces to trap the mugger. Her father probably spent a fortune on dental work.
DC's silver and bronze, and modern ages don't exactly agree with her history, they really like retconning things, but the basic details of what logically came next are: her father disappeared, because of a curse placed by his nemesis Allura, and Zatanna went on a search for him, which brought her into contact with several members of the Justice League, including Batman, Green Lantern, Elongated Man, and the Atom, along with non-Leaguer John Constantine, whom she's been involved in an on-again-off-again relationship for quite some time by the modern day. With their help, she eventually lifted the curse and reunited with both of her parents for a short time, though Sindella was killed rescuing Zatanna and her father was killed saving her and the world from the Great Evil Beast. Zatanna continued to work with the JLA during this time, and eventually she was elected to full membership. She ditched her original magician's costume for a leotard, tights, and a cape during the beginning of her run with the Justice League, wanting to separate herself from her father's legacy and be her own person and to honor her mother's people, too.
With the JLA she fought countless threats to the world, serving as their primary magic and occult expert. When they have a problem that they suspect is magical in nature, they call Zatanna, as she's pretty much the most readily available magical hero since she spends most of her time on Earth and not some other dimensional plane. She grew a lot during these years; she took some time to feel out her own magical path and to separate herself from the Zatara legacy. She went through one period where she abandoned her mnemonic incantations (backwards speech spells) in favor of a magical style closer to her mother's, but she eventually went back to talking backwards. Sometime during her career she was also a mentor to magical child Timothy Hunter, though the timelines are a bit confusing.
Being a full member of the Justice League eventually ended up with her reputation being tarnished and the loss of trust from childhood friend and only-sort-of-requited love Bruce Wayne. The villain Dr. Light got aboard the JLA Watch Tower and raped the wife of the Elongated Man brutally and without remorse. Zatanna and several others returned to discover what he had done and subdued him, but he started raving insanely about how he would come after the others' wives and loved ones, too. Afraid someone else would be hurt like Sue was, the League members present took a vote; Zatanna, Hawkman and the Atom reluctantly voted to tamper with Light's mind and try to turn him toward good, believing just wiping his memory wouldn't stop him. Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Green Lantern voted against it, but the Flash (Barry Allen) voted for it and broke the tie. It was a difficult process and Zatanna accidentally lowered Light's intelligence; in the middle of the spell, Batman tried to stop them, but Zee held him in place and the Leaguers present voted to wipe his memory of the incident. It was kept a secret for quite some time.
The League also used Zatanna to try and turn Catwoman, Selina Kyle, toward good with a little magical nudge. Though she went through with it, Zatanna still felt guilty about the incident with Dr. Light and she only messed with Catwoman's mind reluctantly. Later, she would appear to Selina and own up to and apologize for what she did. She tries to make it up to her as best she can by assisting her in mind-wiping a couple of villains who had deduced Selina's new identity and had attacked her and her baby.
The Dr. Light incident continued to haunt Zatanna. Her friendship with Bruce broke down, because he felt he could no longer trust her, which was a blow to the magician - they had been close since childhood. They started to work through their issues, however, when she continued to help him with cases that took place within the magical and stage communities. They investigated the murder of a former employee of hers by a magician named Loxias, but he turns out to be the Joker, and shoots Zatanna in the throat and locks her in a tank of water. Bruce breaks out and frees her, to find that she could have teleported herself out of the tank, but instead she just healed her throat (which took a lot out of her) and trusted Bruce to save her. He takes her back to Wayne Manor to rest, and stays with her all night. They have a small talk about their feelings for each other, which are present, but Bruce doesn't want to bring her into his dark world and Zatanna won't settle for a relationship built on secrets and hiding. Basically they agree to just be friends.
Zatanna retires from the League, though she remains on-call for magical emergencies, and she continues her work defending the world from mystical threats. She continued her stage career, becoming highly successful as a stage magician, and wrote a book called Hex Appeal: The Modern Girl's Guide to Magic. But it comes out at a superhero support group that she's lost confidence in herself after a failed ritual to search for some of her father's books. Drunk one night, she tried to magic up the perfect man, and a magical being named Gwydion kills a bunch of people she was casting the book locating spell with. This and her continued guilt about the Dr. Light incident, the Selina incident, and over what she did to Bruce made her lose her powers from lack of confidence. She meets a girl named Misty Kilgore with magical abilities, and takes her on as an apprentice. They capture Gwydion together and Zatanna gets back her confidence in time to deal with a rogue mystical being and save the world.
She assists during the global event called Blackest Night, started by the Lantern Corps (the same organization that includes the Green Lanterns), where black power rings are distributed across the universe and the dead rise from their graves. Zatanna fights a Black Lantern version of her father, John Zatara, by herself, sending the other Leaguers off to handle other Black Lantern threats elsewhere. Afterward, she was traumatized, asking Gypsy how many times did she have to see her father die?
Most recently, Zatanna focuses on her stage career (in her 2010 ongoing that got cancelled for the reboot), and battles mystical threats in Gotham and San Francisco. She meets Detective Dale Colton after a show, who requests her help in a case and takes her to a horrible murder scene obviously done by magical beings. She replays the scene from the sole survivor's memories and changes the bodies back into humans, then goes after the perp - Brother Night, who was trying to take over the crime scene in the human world as well as the magical dimensions. After giving him a "talking to" she heads off to help the Justice League with a werehyena problem, while Brother Night recruits a nightmare imp named Fuseli to haunt her nightmares and trap her. He slips into her nightmare of the knight Oscar Hampel killed a man, but her phone rinigng as Detective Colton, being threatened by Brother Night, wakes her up. She beats Fuseli easily and binds him in her hat. Eventually she confronts Brother Night, who uses her father's spirit against her again, but she promises Fuseli freedom if he breaks Night's hold on Zatara's spirit. With that done, she forces Night to renounce his powers, and he's taken into custody by the San Francisco police.
After that, she performs in Vegas at a casino. After stopping a robbery there, the owner, Sonny Raymond, shows a romantic interest in her. She meets up with Zachary, her magician cousin, that night and she promises she'll go see one of his shows that night. But Sonny isn't actually Sonny, he's really his "father" Benjamin Raymond, who made a deal with a demon called Lord Mammon for eternal youth in exchange for innocent souls, mostly of the girls he'd pretend to marry. Mammon wanted Zatanna's soul, so he promises Benjamin that if he gets it for him that night, he'll have true immortality, but if not, he'll go straight to Hell. Raymond uses a love potion on Zee, causing her to fall for him and miss Zachary's show. Zach goes to look for her, and finds her as they're about to be wed, and breaks the spell on her. Together they fight. Raymond fails his test, and begs Zee to get rid of his soul, so she complies - turning it into solid gold, which pleases Mammon and resolves the issue. She goes to see Zach's show that night.
Zatanna later visits Hollywood to attend an opening of a new magic museum. We find out she hates Hollywood for how fake everything is, despite her father's love of the place. That night, the mystical presences of the objects in the museum, which all belonged to very powerful sorcerers and magicians, band together, overpowered by Sargon the Sorcerer's hat, and the objects try to go eradicate evil as a ridiculous looking clothes-person. Zatanna puts a stop to it and realizes what her father saw in Hollywood.
Next we see her in a counseling session with her therapist, talking about her fear of puppets. She uses Fuseli to help her unblock her memories of the incident that could have caused her phobia and she finally recalls the attack by Oscar Hampel and how her father turned him into a puppet, memories her father had wiped from her mind to spare her the trauma. When she wakes up, Oscar the puppet has bound her with string to her bed. She traps Oscar and he explains his history, playing himself up as a sympathetic figure, and she pretends to believe him. They go into the library and she takes out a Soul crystal, which makes him tell the truth, proving he's just as horrible as her father thought he was. Hampel steals some artifacts in the struggle and tries to break the curse on him, but it backfires and turns Zatanna into a puppet herself and turns him back to normal. She spends a few months as a marionette being used by Hampel to get his career back, but Zatanna's assistant Mikey frees her and they turn him back into a puppet.
In the last issue of her ongoing before it was canceled for the reboot, she's traveling home to Shadowcrest in Gotham after a show, and stops the plane from going down on the way. After she gets home, she collapses into bed, and though she'll be woken up by a boy from Limbo Town wanting to be her student, I'm taking her right from this point so she'll wake up in the medical center of the facility.
Roleplay Sample - Log:
There are days when magic seems a burden more than a blessing. Zatanna Zatara has never had a problem with what she is, she's never done anything but embraced the magic in her blood. But sometimes it isn't easy, isn't fun, isn't good for anyone. This is one of those days, when she wakes in a cold sweat, heart pounding. Her dreams aren't always just dreams, but oh, how she wishes this one was. The details are vague, but they make her stomach turn anyway. No one deserves that, no one, but especially not her.
Zatanna climbs out of bed and makes a call.
Later, on the dance floor in a busy club, Zatanna gyrates to the music with Barbara and Diana. They're dressed to the nines, wearing ridiculous, strappy shoes, and looking absolutely gorgeous. The music is pumping and the lights are flashing and there are admiring bodies all around them. It's a good night, but Zatanna is still haunted by the things she's seen in her visions. It hangs over her like a dark cloud, but Barbara deserves this night, she deserves to remember dancing later.
Their night is full of girlish fun, goofing off, things superheroes like them rarely get to do. Outside the restaurant where they ate a late breakfast, Barbara smiles at them, brilliant and exhausted in her hot pink dress, holding her strappy high heels in her hand. "Thank you, I'll never forget this night," she says, and Zatanna has to quickly blink away tears. Knowing, but yet not knowing... She knows the result, but she doesn't know how it will happen, where or when. It could be tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. It could be anywhere, and if she tries to intervene, her friend could end up in a coffin instead of a wheelchair.
The smile on Zee's face is bright enough to light up the early morning as she hugs Barbara tightly. She doesn't need to know. She doesn't need that burden. Diana helps her shoulder it, but they agreed they don't need to tell Barbara. "We should do this again sometime," Zee says with a laugh. "Did you ever get that cute waiter's phone number?"
Barbara laughs, shoves at her lightly, and shakes her head, turning toward the cab Diana called. "Later, you two! I'm worn out."
When the cab has driven out of sight with Barbara in it, Zatanna folds herself into Diana's arms and cries.
Roleplay Sample - Journal:
[The feed clicks on to show an impeccably-dressed woman wearing something that looks like it stepped right out of a Vegas magic show - white shirt, bowtie and gloves, yellow cummerbund, tux jacket with tails, black short shorts, fishnet stockings, and tall boots. Her makeup is tastefully done, her lips painted red. When the video opens up, she smiles and tips her top-hat to the crowd.]
Okay, now that I've gotten the 4-1-1 on this place, I figure I should introduce myself and offer my services to the general public. My name is Zatanna Zatara. No, that isn't a stage name. Back home I was the on-call magician for a certain team, so I'm offering... my particular brand of magical problem-solving. Feel free to inquire about specifics, otherwise I figure I'll volunteer down in Medical for now. [The corners of her mouth quirk up into a confident, jaunty little smile.] Teerts sehtolc raeppa. [A shimmer, some gold sparkles, and all of a sudden, Zatanna is dressed in a much more casual t-shirt and skinny jeans. She doesn't look any less gorgeous, though.]
I also do birthday parties. [A flick of her wrist, and the feed switches off.]
This game includes horrible mental and physical torture of your character. After reading the rules/faq for clarification, how do you expect your character to handle this and continue to function?
Zatanna has been through a ton of shit. She combats the supernatural and dark forces on an almost daily basis, and she handles everything without breaking down. She's been through periods where she's lost her confidence in herself but she's pulled through them and she'll pull through whatever Fac throws at her because there will always be things that need done and she'll want to help do them.
Questions? Comments? Crazed and creative statements? Those go here. DC histories are a bitch to write.
Name: Nekky
Age: 22
AIM: xnecronomical
MSN: NA
Y!M: NA
E-MAIL: nekkyx@gmail.com
Are you new? If not, list your current characters: Tommy Shepherd, Bucky Barnes, and Apollo.
IC Information:
Name: Zatanna Zatara
Fandom: DC Comics
Timeline: Zatanna #16, just after she gets home to Shadowcrest and flops down to sleep. Rude awakening much.
Age: Mid-thirties to early forties.
Appearance: Zatanna looks a bit younger than she is. She's quite pretty, with blue eyes and wavy black hair to about mid-back, and she often dresses fashionably and wears a touch of tasteful makeup. She rarely looks less than put together when she's in public. She's about 5'7" and curvy (what most would call "stacked"), fit from martial arts training and from a very on-the-go life. Her wardrobe varies a lot since she has a literally massive closet and magics up outfits sometimes, but in general, her stage outfit and most of her formal evening wear includes a top hat of some sort, as it's kind of her signature. Her fashion sense is very sophisticated and playful - once she magics up an evening dress whose pattern apparently contains real stars shooting across the fabric. Even her nightgowns are usually pretty.
Stage outfit.
Abilities: Zatanna's powers are both extremely simple, in that most of it just requires she say some words backwards, but also very complicated because... Well, it's difficult to put a limit on that. Zatanna is part Homo Magi, a naturally magical race of humans, on her mother Sindella's side, and her father was a powerful magician himself, so magic is very much in her DNA. She's considered one of the strongest magicians in the DCU. Some things she's done with her magic in the past:
♠ Elemental manipulation; such as water, weather, fire, plants, etc.
♠ Telepathy; reading minds, erasing memories, taking control of someone's mind, etc. These spells are tricky and don't always go as planned, such as when some members of the League voted to erase Dr. Light's memories after he assaulted Sue Dibny. Erasing his memories was something she could do no problem (she wiped some of Bruce Wayne's memories, also), but they voted to change Light, to steer him toward good. When Zatanna tried this, it accidentally diminished his intelligence. She also attempted to steer Catwoman toward the good side also, but that time it didn't affect her intellect. With her spotty history, guilt, and the mistrust others show her, she doesn't do any of this lightly.
♠ Flight; she can use magic to fly, but it takes some concentration.
♠ Teleportation; if she has some idea of where she's going, she can just magic herself and others there.
♠ Illusions and dispelling illusions; illusion magic is easy for her. When Batman was magically given Superman's powers, she used an illusion of his parents to lure him in when he went insane.
♠ Force fields; she can throw up magic barriers, and cast a specific spell to make her invulnerable to other magic.
♠ Healing; Zatanna can heal herself and others with magic. During an incident with the Joker, she's shot in the throat, and heals her injury herself by writing backward in blood. She's also helped heal others, but her powers seem more potent on herself.
♠ Transmutation; Zatanna can change one element into another, or change the shape of an object through magic. Once she changed an entire audience into vampire bats to attack the Joker, and then changed them back and made sure they wouldn't remember it.
♠ Conjuring; she seems to be able to effortlessly conjure up things like clothes and small items.
♠ Knowledge of the occult; she's very knowledgeable about just about every sort of magic and mystic art that exists in the DCU. She can travel the mystic planes and across dimensions, see spiritual and magical entities, manipulate many kinds of magic, extract or move souls, tap in and see magical events happening, etc. She's... basically DC's catch-all deus-ex-machina magician.
♠ Premonitions; Zatanna occasionally gets mystic visions of future events. It happens rarely, and when it does, she isn't given enough information to actually do anything about it, making it more of a curse than a power - such as the time she predicted Barbara Gordon's eventual paralyzation, but didn't know when, where or how it would happen. She couldn't do anything about it, and if she tried, she could have made it much, much worse.
Basically Zatanna is a walking plot device because that's how DC rolls. Her more mundane skills include:
♠ Stage magic and illusions
♠ Basic (as in she's no match for, say, someone from the Batfamily) hand-to-hand combat and martial arts
♠ Improvisation with backwards speech magic
♠ Multilingual - English, Spanish, and Mnemonic Incantation (backwards speech)
♠ One hell of a fashion sense. Shut up this is a skill.
Despite being one of the strongest magicians in the DCU, however, she does have her weaknesses, notably:
♠ She needs to be able to speak, for the most part. If her mouth is covered, her vocal cords are damaged, her throat is injured, etc, she cannot cast unless she does so by writing in blood, which strengthens her magic, but it's something she only does in drastic circumstances. If she's too injured to focus, she can't even cast with blood.
♠ Rule of karma. Magic used with evil intentions is likely to come back and bite you in the ass.
♠ Magic level. If someone casts a spell on someone, and their skill is equal to or greater than Zatanna's, she can't reverse it herself. It's hard to win a fight with a magician whose magic is stronger than hers. Sometimes enchantments against magical beings also prevent her from entering or dispelling spells, thus requiring a human to perform the task.
♠ Basic human weaknesses. She has to heal herself with magic if she's injured, but if she can't get a spell out, she's just as vulnerable as anyone else.
♠ Her spells can be interrupted. Once, Deathstroke incapacitates her with a blow to her liver, inciting vomiting.
Personality: Zatanna has grown a lot. She's the daughter of two powerful magicians, and a descendant of Leonardo da Vinci. Also in her family tree are Nostradamus, famed alchemist Nicholas Flamel, and even a Lord of Atlantis, which is rather a lot to live up to. She had some confidence issues early in her life, most notably some time after her reputation and relationships were tarnished by her mindwipe of Dr. Light. She even lost her powers for a short time because of this lack of confidence, though she eventually worked through it and regained her magical abilities. There was also a period before that where she grew unsure of her path in life and temporarily gave up her father's style of magic with backwards incantations to take up something more similar to her mother's style of magic. She eventually went back to the mnemonic incantation, though. It took time and working through her problems but eventually she grew from an awkward teenager, to a wandering young adult, to the confident, strong-willed woman she is today. She's left her problems in her past, learned from her mistakes, and tried to be better and mend her broken relationships. She's a brilliant performer with one hell of a stage presence; she doesn't really get stage fright, so being the center of an audience's attention doesn't bother her, and she loves stage magic. It's how she makes her living, after all.
The mindwipe incidents effected her greatly through her career, not only her confidence but her self-respect and her relationships with her friends. Zatanna inherited her father's penchant for heroism, and she's always tried to do the right thing, but the League wasn't exactly a great influence on that front all the time. She's worked with the Justice League for a long time protecting Earth and taking care of magical threats in the place of her father, but some of them found other uses for her powers. She says herself she didn't want to tinker with the minds of Dr. Light and Catwoman, but especially with Dr. Light, it seemed like the only thing they could do - he had raped Sue Dibny, and was threatening to go after the wives of other Leagers; trying to magically shift him toward good seemed like the only thing they could do since just wiping his memory wouldn't stop him completely. She feels incredibly guilty about that, and about wiping some of Bruce's memories, and about what she did to Selina. They seemed like the only option at the time but she knows it was wrong, and she tries to make up for it to Bruce and Selina. She tries to be an honest, good person; this shows especially with Selina. She owns up to what she did to her, admits it readily and apologizes and admits she was wrong to do such a thing, even though Selina didn't ask first and Zatanna then owed her favors. It was still the right thing to do and that's what she cares about.
Essentially, she's a good, honest person who cares about people, even if she has a sort of spotty moral track record. She admits she isn't perfect. She makes mistakes, but she owns up to them, learns from them, and tries to be better.
In her day to day, she's a strong, confident, independent woman. She's single and has incredibly bad luck in love (most boyfriends don't work out for very long, if at all, and her love for childhood friend Bruce Wayne is forever unrequited), but she doesn't let that get her down. She carries on, no matter what. Like with Bruce, she doesn't let her love for him compromise who she is and what she wants out of life. They care for each other quite a bit, despite their obvious trust issues stemming from Zatanna wiping his memories of the Dr. Light incident, and they could have had something, but Bruce refuses to let her in and Zatanna refuses to settle, so it'll never be. She still loves him, still occasionally dreams about marrying him, but it doesn't keep her from dating and trying to meet Mr. Right. She's not one of those superheroes that lets being a superhero completely keep her from having a personal life. She knows what she wants and she goes for it.
Because of this, she sometimes also is a bit selfish. Zatanna tries to be a good person, and she is, but she has her flaws just like everyone else - namely an addiction to magic and using it to make her life easier, even if it means inconveniencing others, such as magically silencing annoying talkers at a movie theater and etc. However, she won't use her magic for obviously criminal acts, like magicing up money or to get out of paying for things. She believes in the law of karma, in that if you do something terrible with magic it'll come back to bite you in the ass.
She's a bit of a daddy's girl. She loves both her parents, but since she didn't know her mother for much of her life, her father was the one who raised her. Her foes have often used John Zatara's ghost against her to catch her off her guard, so even in death he could be considered a weakness of hers, and she hates her father being used like that. She's also a very feminine person and likes some typical "girly" things despite not being afraid of getting down and dirty in a fight. She loves clothes, and has a massive two-story closet full of designer clothes, hundreds of pairs of shoes, and more top hats than you can shake a stick at. She's also relatively unphased by "weird" happenings, since she sees "weird" stuff a lot as a prominent member of the magical community. Hell, she's got a real mummy guarding her library at Shadowcrest, the ancestral family home. She's got one hell of a sense of humor about her life in general, actually - her cell phone's ringtone is "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" and her doorbell plays "Abracadabra".
She also cares deeply for people. When she got a vision of Barbara Gordon's eventual paralyzation, she knows she can't stop it from happening, but she does everything she can to give Babs at least one good night to remember before it happens, and she and Diana take her out dancing. Family is also important to her, namely her cousin Zachary. She clears her busy schedule to go see his magic show, and despite his much less starry career, she appears with him sometimes doing joint shows. And she tries to make a difference in the world, serving with the League to protect people.
Essentially, Zatanna Zatara is a hero.
History: Zatanna Zatara was born to magician Giovanni "John" Zatara and his wife, member of the Homo Magi race, Sindella Zatara. Their daughter was destined to be magical with parents like that, and she was - she was born with her mother's talent for magic. She grew up with just her father, however - her mother faked her death and returned to the Homo Magi's secret city in Turkey, leaving Zatanna and John to themselves. Zatara was a good father to his little girl, traveling the world with her and teaching her to use her natural magic. He also taught her stage magic, escapology, and signed her up for martial arts lessons. They were based in Gotham City, and Zatara was good friends with Thomas and Martha Wayne, Bruce Wayne's parents. Zatara often got together with Thomas Wayne and did charity magic shows for children and the like. Because of their fathers being friends, Zatanna and Bruce knew each other as children, and were friends. They would meet again a bit later in life when Zatara taught Bruce escapology, a skill he'd often use as Batman.
Her childhood on the stage shaped her life. She sometimes performed as her father's assistant during shows, even as a child. On one occasion, she witnessed a washed-out puppeteer murder someone; the puppeteer, Oscar Hampel, then tried to kill her, but her father intervened and locked the murderer into the body of one of his puppets, Stringleshanks. This would give Zatanna a phobia of marionettes for years. Later as a young teenager, after getting braces, she once stopped a mugger in a mall with a Speak n Spell (She couldn't talk because of said braces.) and magicked up a cage out of her braces to trap the mugger. Her father probably spent a fortune on dental work.
DC's silver and bronze, and modern ages don't exactly agree with her history, they really like retconning things, but the basic details of what logically came next are: her father disappeared, because of a curse placed by his nemesis Allura, and Zatanna went on a search for him, which brought her into contact with several members of the Justice League, including Batman, Green Lantern, Elongated Man, and the Atom, along with non-Leaguer John Constantine, whom she's been involved in an on-again-off-again relationship for quite some time by the modern day. With their help, she eventually lifted the curse and reunited with both of her parents for a short time, though Sindella was killed rescuing Zatanna and her father was killed saving her and the world from the Great Evil Beast. Zatanna continued to work with the JLA during this time, and eventually she was elected to full membership. She ditched her original magician's costume for a leotard, tights, and a cape during the beginning of her run with the Justice League, wanting to separate herself from her father's legacy and be her own person and to honor her mother's people, too.
With the JLA she fought countless threats to the world, serving as their primary magic and occult expert. When they have a problem that they suspect is magical in nature, they call Zatanna, as she's pretty much the most readily available magical hero since she spends most of her time on Earth and not some other dimensional plane. She grew a lot during these years; she took some time to feel out her own magical path and to separate herself from the Zatara legacy. She went through one period where she abandoned her mnemonic incantations (backwards speech spells) in favor of a magical style closer to her mother's, but she eventually went back to talking backwards. Sometime during her career she was also a mentor to magical child Timothy Hunter, though the timelines are a bit confusing.
Being a full member of the Justice League eventually ended up with her reputation being tarnished and the loss of trust from childhood friend and only-sort-of-requited love Bruce Wayne. The villain Dr. Light got aboard the JLA Watch Tower and raped the wife of the Elongated Man brutally and without remorse. Zatanna and several others returned to discover what he had done and subdued him, but he started raving insanely about how he would come after the others' wives and loved ones, too. Afraid someone else would be hurt like Sue was, the League members present took a vote; Zatanna, Hawkman and the Atom reluctantly voted to tamper with Light's mind and try to turn him toward good, believing just wiping his memory wouldn't stop him. Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Green Lantern voted against it, but the Flash (Barry Allen) voted for it and broke the tie. It was a difficult process and Zatanna accidentally lowered Light's intelligence; in the middle of the spell, Batman tried to stop them, but Zee held him in place and the Leaguers present voted to wipe his memory of the incident. It was kept a secret for quite some time.
The League also used Zatanna to try and turn Catwoman, Selina Kyle, toward good with a little magical nudge. Though she went through with it, Zatanna still felt guilty about the incident with Dr. Light and she only messed with Catwoman's mind reluctantly. Later, she would appear to Selina and own up to and apologize for what she did. She tries to make it up to her as best she can by assisting her in mind-wiping a couple of villains who had deduced Selina's new identity and had attacked her and her baby.
The Dr. Light incident continued to haunt Zatanna. Her friendship with Bruce broke down, because he felt he could no longer trust her, which was a blow to the magician - they had been close since childhood. They started to work through their issues, however, when she continued to help him with cases that took place within the magical and stage communities. They investigated the murder of a former employee of hers by a magician named Loxias, but he turns out to be the Joker, and shoots Zatanna in the throat and locks her in a tank of water. Bruce breaks out and frees her, to find that she could have teleported herself out of the tank, but instead she just healed her throat (which took a lot out of her) and trusted Bruce to save her. He takes her back to Wayne Manor to rest, and stays with her all night. They have a small talk about their feelings for each other, which are present, but Bruce doesn't want to bring her into his dark world and Zatanna won't settle for a relationship built on secrets and hiding. Basically they agree to just be friends.
Zatanna retires from the League, though she remains on-call for magical emergencies, and she continues her work defending the world from mystical threats. She continued her stage career, becoming highly successful as a stage magician, and wrote a book called Hex Appeal: The Modern Girl's Guide to Magic. But it comes out at a superhero support group that she's lost confidence in herself after a failed ritual to search for some of her father's books. Drunk one night, she tried to magic up the perfect man, and a magical being named Gwydion kills a bunch of people she was casting the book locating spell with. This and her continued guilt about the Dr. Light incident, the Selina incident, and over what she did to Bruce made her lose her powers from lack of confidence. She meets a girl named Misty Kilgore with magical abilities, and takes her on as an apprentice. They capture Gwydion together and Zatanna gets back her confidence in time to deal with a rogue mystical being and save the world.
She assists during the global event called Blackest Night, started by the Lantern Corps (the same organization that includes the Green Lanterns), where black power rings are distributed across the universe and the dead rise from their graves. Zatanna fights a Black Lantern version of her father, John Zatara, by herself, sending the other Leaguers off to handle other Black Lantern threats elsewhere. Afterward, she was traumatized, asking Gypsy how many times did she have to see her father die?
Most recently, Zatanna focuses on her stage career (in her 2010 ongoing that got cancelled for the reboot), and battles mystical threats in Gotham and San Francisco. She meets Detective Dale Colton after a show, who requests her help in a case and takes her to a horrible murder scene obviously done by magical beings. She replays the scene from the sole survivor's memories and changes the bodies back into humans, then goes after the perp - Brother Night, who was trying to take over the crime scene in the human world as well as the magical dimensions. After giving him a "talking to" she heads off to help the Justice League with a werehyena problem, while Brother Night recruits a nightmare imp named Fuseli to haunt her nightmares and trap her. He slips into her nightmare of the knight Oscar Hampel killed a man, but her phone rinigng as Detective Colton, being threatened by Brother Night, wakes her up. She beats Fuseli easily and binds him in her hat. Eventually she confronts Brother Night, who uses her father's spirit against her again, but she promises Fuseli freedom if he breaks Night's hold on Zatara's spirit. With that done, she forces Night to renounce his powers, and he's taken into custody by the San Francisco police.
After that, she performs in Vegas at a casino. After stopping a robbery there, the owner, Sonny Raymond, shows a romantic interest in her. She meets up with Zachary, her magician cousin, that night and she promises she'll go see one of his shows that night. But Sonny isn't actually Sonny, he's really his "father" Benjamin Raymond, who made a deal with a demon called Lord Mammon for eternal youth in exchange for innocent souls, mostly of the girls he'd pretend to marry. Mammon wanted Zatanna's soul, so he promises Benjamin that if he gets it for him that night, he'll have true immortality, but if not, he'll go straight to Hell. Raymond uses a love potion on Zee, causing her to fall for him and miss Zachary's show. Zach goes to look for her, and finds her as they're about to be wed, and breaks the spell on her. Together they fight. Raymond fails his test, and begs Zee to get rid of his soul, so she complies - turning it into solid gold, which pleases Mammon and resolves the issue. She goes to see Zach's show that night.
Zatanna later visits Hollywood to attend an opening of a new magic museum. We find out she hates Hollywood for how fake everything is, despite her father's love of the place. That night, the mystical presences of the objects in the museum, which all belonged to very powerful sorcerers and magicians, band together, overpowered by Sargon the Sorcerer's hat, and the objects try to go eradicate evil as a ridiculous looking clothes-person. Zatanna puts a stop to it and realizes what her father saw in Hollywood.
Next we see her in a counseling session with her therapist, talking about her fear of puppets. She uses Fuseli to help her unblock her memories of the incident that could have caused her phobia and she finally recalls the attack by Oscar Hampel and how her father turned him into a puppet, memories her father had wiped from her mind to spare her the trauma. When she wakes up, Oscar the puppet has bound her with string to her bed. She traps Oscar and he explains his history, playing himself up as a sympathetic figure, and she pretends to believe him. They go into the library and she takes out a Soul crystal, which makes him tell the truth, proving he's just as horrible as her father thought he was. Hampel steals some artifacts in the struggle and tries to break the curse on him, but it backfires and turns Zatanna into a puppet herself and turns him back to normal. She spends a few months as a marionette being used by Hampel to get his career back, but Zatanna's assistant Mikey frees her and they turn him back into a puppet.
In the last issue of her ongoing before it was canceled for the reboot, she's traveling home to Shadowcrest in Gotham after a show, and stops the plane from going down on the way. After she gets home, she collapses into bed, and though she'll be woken up by a boy from Limbo Town wanting to be her student, I'm taking her right from this point so she'll wake up in the medical center of the facility.
Roleplay Sample - Log:
There are days when magic seems a burden more than a blessing. Zatanna Zatara has never had a problem with what she is, she's never done anything but embraced the magic in her blood. But sometimes it isn't easy, isn't fun, isn't good for anyone. This is one of those days, when she wakes in a cold sweat, heart pounding. Her dreams aren't always just dreams, but oh, how she wishes this one was. The details are vague, but they make her stomach turn anyway. No one deserves that, no one, but especially not her.
Zatanna climbs out of bed and makes a call.
Later, on the dance floor in a busy club, Zatanna gyrates to the music with Barbara and Diana. They're dressed to the nines, wearing ridiculous, strappy shoes, and looking absolutely gorgeous. The music is pumping and the lights are flashing and there are admiring bodies all around them. It's a good night, but Zatanna is still haunted by the things she's seen in her visions. It hangs over her like a dark cloud, but Barbara deserves this night, she deserves to remember dancing later.
Their night is full of girlish fun, goofing off, things superheroes like them rarely get to do. Outside the restaurant where they ate a late breakfast, Barbara smiles at them, brilliant and exhausted in her hot pink dress, holding her strappy high heels in her hand. "Thank you, I'll never forget this night," she says, and Zatanna has to quickly blink away tears. Knowing, but yet not knowing... She knows the result, but she doesn't know how it will happen, where or when. It could be tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. It could be anywhere, and if she tries to intervene, her friend could end up in a coffin instead of a wheelchair.
The smile on Zee's face is bright enough to light up the early morning as she hugs Barbara tightly. She doesn't need to know. She doesn't need that burden. Diana helps her shoulder it, but they agreed they don't need to tell Barbara. "We should do this again sometime," Zee says with a laugh. "Did you ever get that cute waiter's phone number?"
Barbara laughs, shoves at her lightly, and shakes her head, turning toward the cab Diana called. "Later, you two! I'm worn out."
When the cab has driven out of sight with Barbara in it, Zatanna folds herself into Diana's arms and cries.
Roleplay Sample - Journal:
[The feed clicks on to show an impeccably-dressed woman wearing something that looks like it stepped right out of a Vegas magic show - white shirt, bowtie and gloves, yellow cummerbund, tux jacket with tails, black short shorts, fishnet stockings, and tall boots. Her makeup is tastefully done, her lips painted red. When the video opens up, she smiles and tips her top-hat to the crowd.]
Okay, now that I've gotten the 4-1-1 on this place, I figure I should introduce myself and offer my services to the general public. My name is Zatanna Zatara. No, that isn't a stage name. Back home I was the on-call magician for a certain team, so I'm offering... my particular brand of magical problem-solving. Feel free to inquire about specifics, otherwise I figure I'll volunteer down in Medical for now. [The corners of her mouth quirk up into a confident, jaunty little smile.] Teerts sehtolc raeppa. [A shimmer, some gold sparkles, and all of a sudden, Zatanna is dressed in a much more casual t-shirt and skinny jeans. She doesn't look any less gorgeous, though.]
I also do birthday parties. [A flick of her wrist, and the feed switches off.]
This game includes horrible mental and physical torture of your character. After reading the rules/faq for clarification, how do you expect your character to handle this and continue to function?
Zatanna has been through a ton of shit. She combats the supernatural and dark forces on an almost daily basis, and she handles everything without breaking down. She's been through periods where she's lost her confidence in herself but she's pulled through them and she'll pull through whatever Fac throws at her because there will always be things that need done and she'll want to help do them.
Questions? Comments? Crazed and creative statements? Those go here. DC histories are a bitch to write.
