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Selina Kyle: “Unlike you, I know who I am. I don’t need anyone to tell me.” | |
| APP HMD PATH Shira |
Character name: Selina Kyle
Age: 17/18, she isn’t entirely sure. Probably closer to 18.
Canon: Gotham
Canon point: The end of season 4, right after she was shot
History: Wiki link
ruthless, compassionate, adaptable
Influential Events:
Abandoned by mother at five years old: “My mom left before I could ride a bike. I never knew my dad.”
While this does not occur on screen, Selina specifically states it is: “before I was old enough to ride a bike.” This abandonment forms a cornerstone of her identity - a dual longing for belonging and home and uncertainty whether or not she is worthy of it. According to a friend, after her mother left her, she was “wandering the Narrows, crying” ...and her mother never came back for her. This time is the birth of the core of her personality, her determination to survive, to not be seen as vulnerable, and her willingness to be ruthless in order to stay safe. She was formed in this time of abandonment in the Narrows into a competent pick-pocket and thief, into a girl who knows all the best places to hide, the way the world works, and who is canonically willing to scratch out someone’s eyes if threatened.
Living with Bruce Wayne: “Out there on the streets, it’s not enough to be strong. You’ve gotta be mean. You’ve gotta be ruthless.”
Sometimes, there’s a person whose path in life so entwined with yours that you leave sticky fingerprints all over each other’s souls. For Selina Kyle, that person is Bruce Wayne. She was intrigued by him ever since she was a witness to his parents’ murder, so much so that when a serial killer was going after the firstborn of Gotham’s elite, she snuck into his study to make sure he was all right while he was sleeping. (While she was there, she rummaged through the study undetected and stole something shiny off the desk, just because, and then snuck back out.)
In order to avoid being sent upstate to an orphanage-like facility (it is strongly implied that she has been there once before, bad things happened to her, and she broke out and returned to Gotham), she lies and says that she not only witnessed the murder, but that she saw the face of the man who shot him. To convince her to stay and act as a material witness, Jim Gordon places her with Bruce Wayne and Alfred in the Wayne Manor.
Bruce Wayne is the weirdest kid Selina has ever met. He has more money than God. He “trains” himself by boxing and falling into a pool, fully clothed, and timing himself to see how long he can hold his breath. And strangest of all? He sees her. He really sees her. He takes everything that she throws at him, unphased, and just keeps… seeing her. For someone who has been abandoned, for someone who has worked hard to remain inscrutable, for someone who has never had anyone see her as more than a mark or an inconvenience… this is really big.
It stays that way, even when assassins come to kill her, she tells Bruce that they’re after him, and has him run off with her. Eventually, she confesses all of it to him, even tells him that she lied about seeing who really killed his parents, and he… still sees her. He’s hurt, and he’s angry, but he doesn’t try to cut her off. He continues to treat her as a friend. And so she will keep coming back to him… after all, he has a nice way about him.
Losing Bridgit Pike: “Rule number one? Look out for number one.”
Fast-forward about a year and a half, and Selina has become more connected in the criminal world of Gotham. This is a good thing for her and a dangerous thing for her, and it involves running favors for the current king of crime - and over the course of doing that favor, it brings her into contact with a childhood friend, Bridgit Pike. She sees that Bridgit is living with her “brothers”, sons of her mother’s boyfriend, and that they are treating her like a slave - complete with chains attached to a wall for Bridgit when company is not over.
Selina can’t quite leave that alone. At first she tries to keep her involvement to a minimum, encouraging Bridgit to “be strong,” but as she continues to get thrown into Bridgit’s orbit over the course of the job, she starts confronting her directly - “What good is family if you’re a slave?” and trying to get her to leave her brothers and go out on her own - “Look at me, I’m free!” When Bridgit’s brothers force her to start fires that destroy buildings in Gotham, Bridgit accidentally kills a cop. Now Bridgit is stuck with her brothers on one side and the police on the other.
Selina tries everything to help Bridgit. They rob an underground human trafficking ring. Selina sets her up to get on a bus and go out of town. They’re almost clear… when her brothers kidnap her again. Bridgit ends up going a little crazy and murdering both her brothers by burning them alive. When Selina follows up with her, Bridgit is clearly not herself. Bridgit wants to remain in the city where she is being hunted for murdering a cop in order to go after all the “pervs and the bullies” - that is when Selina reminds Bridgit of rule number one - look out for number one - get out of town, get safe!
There are so many reasons why this event is significant, not in the least because we get to see how Selina will do anything for the people that are important to her - compromise her survival, compromise her stated values, get ready to charge in, guns blazing to rescue them… and even reach out for help. Selina actually 1) acknowledges that she’s in over her head and 2) reaches out to Jim Gordon - a cop! - who’d promised he’d bring Bridgit in safely. All she cares about is that her friend gets out of this alive.
Sadly… Bridgit does not. This has a devastating impact on Selina, who tried everything that she could to protect Bridgit… and still failed. This enhances her feelings of inadequacy and her conclusion that she could never, ever trust a cop… if she was going to be able to protect herself and the people that she cared about, she’d have to get stronger and do it on her own.
Her Mother Returns/Breaking up with Bruce/Joining Tigress: “I’m tired of just surviving. I want more. I want to… move up.”
Fast-forward another year - Selina has started to date-without-calling-it-dating Bruce Wayne, her mother years about it, and returns to see her in order to pull a con job and get thousands of dollars for Bruce. Bruce figures it out immediately, but doesn’t tell Selina, and when Selina figures it out she is heartbroken.
This leads to her avoiding all contact with Bruce until Alfred is in the hospital and Bruce, in a lot of emotional distress, lashes out at her, tells her, “You don’t believe in anyone or anything but yourself… you don’t give a damn about me, I know you better than that.”
This withdrawal of the one person who saw her and believed in her caused Selina to seriously reexamine herself. And what she decided was that she wanted to do more than just survive, and she takes a deliberate turn away from the aspects of her character that were more compassionate and turns to one of the most hard core criminals that she knows.
Even after she and Bruce eventually reconcile, Selina doesn’t turn away from the path she’s chosen. She’s become ambitious, no longer wanting just to survive, but to have a purpose, a family, a place to belong -- things to call her own. And she is willing to work to get what she wants.
Fighting Ivy: “I’m no hero.”
Nearly a year and a half later, another friend she failed to save has gone crazy, and Poison Ivy, a girl she looked out for, is now trying to poison and kill the majority of Gotham because people are evil and hurt her and hurt plants. Yes.
This time, even though Gordon finds her and asks for information about Ivy, Selina doesn’t hand control of the situation over to him. She finds Ivy herself, destroys the Lazarus water Ivy was using to make her poison plants, and the two fight, leaving Ivy with her poisoned nails around Selina’s throat and Selina with her knife pressed against one of Ivy’s arteries. When presented with the option of both of them just killing each other, Selina reminds Ivy of their friendship, says that, “This isn’t what I want” and - throws her knife away, leaving herself completely in Ivy’s hands.
This. Is. Huge. Selina “Survive at All Costs” Kyle destroys her exit strategy and leaves herself vulnerable in pursuit of a goal that’s higher than just her own survival. This is the result of the loss of Bridgit, Bruce throwing “You don’t care about anyone but yourself” in her face, the result of forming a bond with Tabitha and Barbara, she’s able to take this risk. Ivy doesn’t kill her, but she loses the friendship. Selina can’t call this a win - she’s sad about Ivy going crazy - but she’s glad she stopped her from murdering the entire city. She knows it doesn’t make up for watching Ivy kill that dad in front of his family, but at least this time she did something. It doesn’t feel like being a hero to Selina, it feels like cleaning up her mess. She wants to be strong enough to keep doing that.
The Edge of the Knife: “Why does it have to be about sides?”
In the midst of all the craziness, a few months after the thing with Ivy, Selina has Two Crime Moms and Bruce is back to being Important and they both need a magical knife in order to kill Ra’s al Ghul. (...Gotham.)
The point is, Selina steals the knife and then has to choose - who does she give it to? Her crime moms, who are holding a gun on Bruce/Alfred, or Bruce/Alfred because Bruce is the only one that can kill Ra’s? Bruce had been used to kill Ra’s before, and the guilt had driven him into a horrible place, so she decides to give it to her crime moms. When she finds that they have no plan, she goes back to Bruce, who tells her to get out because she chose the wrong side. She makes the play that she did it to 1) protect him and 2) why does it have to be about sides, why can’t it just be about stopping the crazy zombie? She came to him for help, because Tabitha and Barbara are “--going to get hurt, and I don’t want that.”
This is an example of Selina successfully tightrope-walking the line between her loyalties, her ambition. It’s a key moment in her character development because she keeps her goals in sight and successfully plays both sides of the ‘right/wrong’ scenario by… ignoring them, and doing what she believes needs to be done to protect the people she cares about and kill the bad guy. Even though she ‘betrayed’ both sides, they see her and why she did what she did, and it actually wound up helping her to strengthen her bonds with them. It wasn’t an easy thing for her to do, to go against the people in the world that she cares most about, but it’s one of her proudest moments because… it actually worked. Everyone lived.
Link to Samples: Link to Sample 1; Link to Sample 2
Chosen path: Rogue
3 Abilities:
○ Evasion: You can dodge an otherwise lethal attack once per day.
○ Cat Burglar: You gain the ability to climb walls that are otherwise unscalable.
○ Pickpocket: You have the ability to steal money from travelers who are not paying attention to you.
Why this path?:
This path, because no matter what I chose, Selina would end up trying to run around and steal things anyway. She’s a morally gray character; her decisions are often based on her own self-interest and her personal loyalties, and only rarely do they run into some kind of moral code like: Don’t kill everybody. She takes in strays and she tries to look after people around her who need help, especially if they’re friends, but she is a thief and she likes being a thief.
blurb code by photosynthesis