How many people do you know that have even a passing knowledge of comics could say that their favorite Batman character is Robin?
Weird right?
I think my love for the teenage superhero came from the cartoons. You see, for a good while I never actually read a comic and all my knowledge of heroes came from cartoons or a couple of games I had. Teen Titans and Young Justice, two shows that both had a Robin and were shows that I that I had watched regularly. In Young Justice's case they had two Robins, one of which is responsible for Lauren's creation.
That dude right there is Tim Drake the third Robin and is currently known as Red Robin. I'm sure you're thinking, "how'd you get a teenage lesbian in powered armor out of Tim Drake?" Well I sort of did and sort of didn't, Lauren's bo staff use and relationship with Adali were inspired by him and an early version of Lauren was inspired by a lot of his adventures in his comics. Everything else came from this chick,
That's Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake's girlfriend and that's where the rest of Lauren came from. She's slightly sarcastic and she has her doubts but she still wants to be a hero besides that.
But that's only the framing of Lauren, where did backstory or powers or even design come from?
Well you see, prior to me wanting to post the Saviors I had another story called the Iron Maiden that I wanted to post. Lauren still lived in Sunlight, she still had Karen (more on that later) and she was still a teenage superhuman. In the Iron Maiden Lauren got her powers after being hit by a truck carrying Aran and a bunch of other nanomachines and was knocked into a coma. She woke up from the coma with superpowers and jumped at the chance to spice up her normally boring life.
Lauren didn't have the same appearance that I gave her in story. She didn't have glasses and didn't wear as much red or pink. The glasses is sort of a nod to the old story, in a chapter I had written Lauren went undercover at a party and had to use Aran as glasses to avoid getting caught.
The Iron Maiden wasn't very good now that I think about it. I hadn't yet found my voice when writing and my characters were sort of flat. I scrapped it. I still came up with ideas for her though, I gave her supporting characters, Karen, her crush Nathan, and a happy go lucky girl named Lila.
Once I came up with the idea of the Saviors I found some use for Lauren and her cast of characters. I'll elaborate on the origins of the team later but in short the entire team was composed of characters I scrapped that were still interesting to me. I needed to redue Lauren, she needed a role on the team. I went through a number of traits that I could use for her new personality but I eventually stopped on her main three, her wittyness, her anger, and her love of tech. In my head I always thought of her as more of the Robin or Batgirl of the team and I spent a lot of my time watching Young Justice as a base for the character.
Then I ran into some problems.
See I like to think of Lauren as a pretty likable character, badass teenage girl in powered armor? Everyone loves that right? Except she's a little boring. There's only so much sarcasm and fights with Seiji one can read before it becomes one note and boring. For a awhile I had no Idea how I was supposed to spice up her character and make her more interesting to read.
Then I got personal.
While I've never had someone close to me die I've been struggling with more depressing thoughts. I figured I could give some depth to Lauren by incorporating how I felt about certain things. Because of the weekly schedule you probably have no idea what I'm referring to but around chapter 13 you should get it.
I think that I've finally made Lauren into a character I'm proud to show to others. I can explain them to her her origins both in her creation and in story. I can explain how she feels about her friends or Adali. Most important of all I can tell others how she's like a piece of me. Lauren's a character that I've put my soul into and one that I hope everyone enjoys reading.
Tl;dr: Lauren is Robin and Batgirl combined, she comes from an old story I wrote and she goes through some character development that will make her more interesting to read later on.
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and then Add to home screen.