YMMV / Batgirl (2009)

• Adorkable: Her generally upbeat attitude combined with her Genre Savvy exterior push her into this territory, but with her making references to Star Trek and Harry Potter, her tendency towards mild slapstick, her quips about wearing granny panties, and her bad attempts at flirting, Steph crosses the line hard into dorky. She solidifies both the dorky aspect and the adorable aspect in her interaction with Gage when she bumps into him outside of costume.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Can the Gray Ghost really teleport, or does he use stage illusions to fake it?
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Her son at the end of the series is Tim's due to his black hair. Heck, some even speculate it might be Damian's!
  • Steph mom's mentioned that a girl with superpowers and a guy calling himself 'Doctor Mid-Nite' saved her life from Black Mercy. It's a well-known running joke in fandom that Tim resembles Doctor Mid-Nite's in his new Red Robin costume (Steph even calls him out on it in canon). So... was 'Dr. Mid-Nite' actually Tim instead, saving her life discreetly, or was it actually Doctor Mid-Nite himself? Given Supergirl's superspeed, she could have gotten to either one of them, but given Steph and Tim's relationship, and the fact neither Kara or Steph have ever really interacted with the real doc, there's a chance it was Tim... but then again, Tim isn't a doctor and Doctor Mid-Nite (if you couldn't tell) is.
• Fanon Discontinuity: The ending in the final, 24th issue practically encourages this treatment for the following reboot Batgirl series featuring Barbara as Batgirl.
  "It's only the end if you want it to be."
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Although a number of Cassandra fans detest Stephanie for "replacing" Cass, and a number of Stephanie fans hate Barbara for "replacing" her, they seem to be a vocal minority, and most of fans of the three main Batgirls get along well.
  • Stephanie fans and Supergirl fans are on real good terms, and often Steph fans are Kara fans and vice versa, possibly because of their interactions, their similar personalities and their excellent team-ups.
  • Stephanie fans tend to also be fans of Wally West as The Flash, owing to the Legacy Character aspect, their similar personalities, and the fact both characters are fun leads who nonetheless have experienced tragedy and trauma, but choose to be idealistic in spite of those experiences. They also just had "trauma bonding" due to both characters being Exiled from Continuity in the New 52 reboot in favour of their predecessors taking the role back, and the antagonistic relationship between Dan DiDio and the two's fandom.
  • Stephanie's fandom tend to have a positive relationship with that of Young Justice, due to Steph's previous role as an occasional Supporting Character, her past relationship with Tim Drake, and the similarities between her and Cassie Sandsmark, never mind simply the fact they were all part of the same era of young new characters. So much so, when the book was revived in 2019, Steph became an Ascended Extra, getting far more guest appearances before finally joining the team entirely right before it was cancelled.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A letter from the editor in one of the early issues says that, following the announcement of a new Batgirl title for 2009, DC may have stoked rumors that Barbara was somehow going to become Batgirl again, but they never really gave it serious thought since Babs was way more interesting as Oracle, and they'd rather use someone new. Two years later... On top of that, when Steph "died", she said that she was part of the Robin legacy and no one could ever take that away.
  • This goes further and crosses into What Could Have Been territory; before it was decided to use Stephanie Brown, among the ideas DC editorial were considering was to bring Barbara Gordon out of the Oracle role and make her Batgirl again, something that was protested against by Gail Simone, who argued she was stronger as Oracle. Come 2011, and Simone herself is the one tasked with writing Barbara's return to Batgirl (a task she took largely because she didn't like the idea much and didn't want to see it mishandled).
• Testosterone Brigade: Though a "girl" comic staring a female lead who isn't a Ms. Fanservice type, Steph's run as Batgirl garnered a notable amount of male fans, and to this day many will credit her as their favourite Batgirl over the more traditionally Ms. Fanservice leaning Barbara Gordon. As she'd spent the last 20 years prior being the primary love interest to Audience Surrogate Tim Drake, a lot of young male fans were quite attached to her as a character, and though she's not built like a model, as she was legally of-age during her Batgirl days many found her personality and charisma highly attractive all on its own.
• Replacement Scrappy: While this largely faded over time, her replacing Cass was not well-received at first, since Cass had already ate it due to Adam Beechen royally screwing up her character. The sole good thing to come from that was that Bruce Wayne adopted her... Then apparently died in Final Crisis, and Cass was Put on a Bus. While Stephanie is popular among Cassandra Cain fans, the way she was replaced did not endear her to many of Cass' fans (it was eventually retconned that Cass was told to give up the Batgirl identity), especially due to the fact that DC replaced one of the few Asian superheroes with their own ongoing with a white, blonde, blue-eyed successor.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Little is revealed about the origins and individual motives of the five Reapers (college students of disparate majors who work as mercenaries and are Arc Villains). Group member Harmony hints at some Well-Intentioned Extremist or Forced into Evil scenario in Issue #21 when she talks about not being happy about what she is doing and desperately insists that their endgame "has to be worth it." However, later issues never indicate that the Blackgate job is anything more than the Reapers having been hired to kill a prisoner in exchange for being offered a super serum to get metahuman powers. Detective Gage also reveals that he was once a member of an earlier version of the group, but that revelation doesn't provide much useful insight into stopping or understanding the Reapers.

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