Damian slipping a dagger into Steph’s coffin as a funerary gift, because he would never risk sending his sister into the afterlife unarmed.
Steph waking up in her dress in her grave without even a belt buckle to her name, but feeling that hilt digging into her hip. Steph using the dagger to dig her way out.
Talia coming to retrieve Steph off the streets, and Steph still has that dagger. Steph pulling it on Talia on pure instinct.
Talia confirming Steph’s identity by Steph’s stance & grip—exactly the way Damian taught her (exactly the way he learned from his mother.)
Steph recognizing Damian’s features in Talia, and lowering the knife in confusion. Talia taking Steph by the wrist and leading her into the vehicle that will take them out of Gotham until Steph makes her grand return.
Shadow!Steph being benched during War Games because Bruce won’t risk her life in a war zone with a toddler at home. She insists she can do it, she’ll be fine, she can help!
“You’ve done enough,” Bruce says.
(He intended to placate her. Instead, Steph recoils as though struck.)
She looks around, desperate for support. But Duke knows what it’s like to lose parents and shakes his head. Cass won’t meet Steph’s eyes, mentally weighing the protection of her goddaughter against the safety of the city & knowing Cass herself will do more good in the city but needs Luna safe to concentrate. Damian’s already in the city and unaware of their fight until Steph calls him—at which point, Damian curtly says they’ll call Steph if they need her but he’s a little busy right now.
“What about Tim?” Steph blurts out, pointing. “He’s got a family! His parents don’t even know he’s working with us!”
Tim opens his mouth to argue, but is interrupted.
“Tim’s benched too,” Bruce says.
“What?!” Tim glares. “No I’m not. You need me out there.”
“They need me out there,” Steph snaps, unable to keep the bitterness & rage out of her voice.
(She’s been trying so, so hard to swallow the jealousy & betrayal ever since Cass made Tim Spoiler without asking, and Tim let slip he’d known their identities long before the first time he approached Steph to befriend her. When Cass was too busy being a mentor, when Bruce played blatant favorites, when everyone seemed to think motherhood had cost Steph all her hard-earned hero credentials and she should just stay home with the baby while they did all the work. Steph tried.)
Bruce picked up the phone and called the Drakes while making direct eye-contact, assuring them their son was safe and that Bruce was sending him home right away, that Alfred will bring him right over, it’s no trouble at all.
“Thanks for nothing,” Tim hissed, chucking his cape back in his locker and shouldering past Steph after a few more minutes of heated 3-way arguing which only made Bruce triple down on his decree.
(Steph called her mother and successfully convinced her to look after Luna while everyone was busy, threw on her suit, and stormed out to prove herself by helping the city. No one would ever dismiss her capabilities after this, Steph would make sure of it.)
Red Hood!Steph would still be a Desolation avatar—there’s too much anger, too much destruction, too much hate & desire for the complete annihilation of the targets of that hate to be anything else—but she’s different.
RH!Jason is an earthquake.
RH!Steph would be a lightning storm. The crackle of electricity, the taste of ozone, the light of something utterly uncontrollable in her eyes. The billowing, bulging thunder cloud sweeping across the sky to blot out the sun. Wind enough to rip up trees, rain so heavy you can’t see, but lightning, lightning every few seconds, like all the electricity in the world has been stolen underneath her skin. A fire-starter (like Jason) but the blaze itself is not what you have to Fear, the blaze is merely a side effect of something much more powerful sweeping through. Her victims are not shattered bones & splattered brains, they’re bleeding ears & the reek of cooking meat.
Jason borders the Buried far closer than he’d like.
Steph would dance on the border of the Vast like a small child dances in the rain: with wild abandon & near-feral glee.
Oh boy. This is the big one. I've agonized over this, and getting the design right has been... ugh. Nevermind. Here we go.
Death Mask needs to draw on Red Hood and Steph designs. (I would draw from Black Mask designs, but frankly Roman's designs are all kinda boring? He's a skull-head in a suit, and basically always has been; it's simple & effective, but there's not a lot to iterate on there.) Steph's suits tend to be armored one-pieces, but layering is so crucial to most Red Hood designs, that balancing the two has been... tricky.
(I've already shared the Stephanie Brown Costume History page. Unfortunately, the n52 designs page seems to be just descriptions with no pictures, and the page for her n52 appearances doesn't give you many good angles. So here's Steph's "Future's End" & "Future State" designs, as the stand-out missing designs, in my opinion.)
The absolute vital part of any Red Hood inspired design is, of course, the helmet. It's also been the biggest pain. Jason's had some good helmet designs and a lot of bad ones over the years, and (as I've previously stated) finding a full reference page for them is basically impossible. So here's what I'm going with.
Steph starts with a sleek, sculpted black metal base. Say something like this model of Jason's Injustice helmet. The primary difference would be that Steph's helmet opens up at the front rather than the back; the faceplate would be hinged at the top of the head, and it would swing up & forwards to reveal her face.
(Using the Injustice helmet as a base because it more than most looks like it really should open from the front. I'd also say the sides would also be able to open wider, so that it can still fit snug without being a pain to get in & out of. Not that anyone would ever bother to draw that detail, but I think it would look neat opening up in 3 directions all at once.)
Next, most of the face plate is covered by a sculpted skull. This is how she invokes the whole "Death Mask" idea, as well as purposefully stealing Roman's gimmick. Below the teeth are a couple understated tubs & valves, evoking a gasmask---something like this.
(Kinda a Red X look, I'm realizing now that I'm digging through my reference folders all at once... Anyway, this piece seems to be by Laura Sheridan, but her website seems to be down, you can only buy her art seemingly 2nd hand, and I can't find this picture listed anywhere but pinterest.)
The edges, mechanical bits, and any detail work added should be done in copper.
Within the eye sockets are two recessed glowing lenses, like Jason often has, though Steph's glow a dark magenta, casting light that borders on red.
(Obviously, these lenses change size & shape to show emotion through the mask, like you do. They're not designed to---in fact, logically all the bat-masks are designed like this in order to help hide the wearer's emotions---but that's comic logic for you.)
Below the helmet, Steph's suit is mainly made up of reinforced black leather motorcycle pants, a black undersuit, and an armored vest like this.
(But black. Obviously.)
However, she accessorizes. Steph has added a decorative metal ribcage to her armor, as well was plates mimicking a spine. The ribs should be copper-colored, while the spine can be either metallic or black.
(Depending on who's drawing them, the ribs could range from purely decorative to practically another layer of armor. And following the links from pinterest, both of those artists have apparently taken their rib-art down, which is once again very disappointing.)
Steph wears a chunky utility belt which sits crooked on her hips. I personally think it should be black (maybe brown?) with either copper, ivory, or dark magenta snaps/clasps holding the pouches shut (pick one for all pouches, not a mixture). She has a gun holstered on each hip, one on each thigh, a set of throwing knives (3-5) on the front of the belt, and wears her sickle-swords strapped criss-cross on her back.
The swords themselves are made from a copper-alloy, retaining their coppery color, and easily double her reach (are about as long as one arm.) They have a hilt not dissimilar to an Egyptian khopesh, but a completely different blade; Steph's swords have a much more exaggerated curve, and crucially, they're sharpened on the inside of the crescent, where a khopesh is sharpened on the outside. They legitimately look like a crescent moon sickle, stretched out to sword size.
(Khopesh hilt, and genuinely the best crescent sickle sword I can find for what I'm picturing. Steph's would be in much better shape, obviously.)
Steph keeps it understated-but-still-stated with knee-high, buckle-up, black leather motorcycle boots.
(These are mid-calf, but it's the closest I can find that aren't completely over the top. Also, any artist who figured out how to make the laces work without losing the straps would win my unending love for the symbolism of Steph clearly still mimicking her big brother but trying so hard to hide it.)
Steph’s sleeves are armored in black metal plates, ending in sharpened black gauntlets. I don't care much about the specific structure, I just really want that clawed look.
(Shorter would be more practical for finesse work, while longer claws could be worked into her fighting style. I am going back & forth on whether this should be both arms or just one of them, because I’m a sucker for asymmetric designs, but I think it might be a bit too much with all the other details.)
Finally, over top of it all, Steph wears an uneven ivory-colored hooded shawl made of layers of thin, wispy fabric. It hangs down her back to her waist, but bunches up in the front over her collarbones. It's purposefully designed to look tangled & messy, hiding her body shape with all its bulk & fly-aways, and is flimsy enough that grabbing hold of basically any part of it will just leave you with a fist full of torn fabric.
This is the hardest to find examples for, but... okay, so it's shaped roughly like this:
(If anyone can find the non-pinterest source for this one, I'd hugely appreciate it; all I'm getting is a dead twitter link.)
It's layered like these:
And it's made from material like this:
(This definitely gets swapped out for either a white scarf or a brown trench coat pretty regularly, just because those are easier to wrap your head around/draw. I think both could work & be cool, but Steph is trying to give off “undead vibes” with this original costume, and this gives her a more ghostly look which… okay, is heavily inspired by this Jason design.)
Also, Steph's hair is still long, but she ties it up in either a french or dutch braid before going out most of the time. Dutch is for going out in public or to the gym, where she'll lift it off her neck in a ponytail, french then gets coiled into a bun inside of her helmet.
(I am undecided on whether or not she also has an undercut.)
Ivy gets sick of watching the Bats bicker. They fight like cats, screaming & tearing at eachother, then turn around and risk their lives for eachother. She pays enough attention to know Death Mask isn’t just a new rogue—the way they rant at eachother, the things spat, the obvious intimacy of trust shattered, Death Mask is obviously one of the two lost girls. Under that helmet is either the second Moonbeam or the second Shadow, and whoever she is, she is biblically angry about whatever went down back then.
But the other thing is, Ivy’s been talking with Harley again. And Harley’s favorite thing right now to distract herself from her most recent breakup with the Joker (please, please let this one stick) is psychoanalyzing the Bats. The commonalities, the details, the word choice when they yell at eachother—the idiots all still care deeply for eachother, they’re just blocking out that love with fear & hurt & rage on both sides. Harley jokes that she’d love to chain them all down for a big, messy family therapy session (“Or two. Or thirty!”) to talk through everything in a healthier way than chucking bombs & batarangs at eachother.
The next time Ivy has Death Mask at her mercy, she uses her latest experiment, inspired by those conversations.
“It’s very simple. First the seed will take root in your chest, then the stem will grow into your lungs, and then the flowers will begin to blossom until you choke on them. The cure is easy enough, though. If you can find the person you most long for, honestly speak with them, and make peace, the plant will wither and die. The process even encourages cell growth, so there shouldn’t be any long-term consequences.”
She’s expecting rage, horror, incredulity, or questions about the specifics. (She’s hoping to keep it vague enough to force as many reconciliations as possible.)
Instead Death Mask lets out a cracking, bitter laugh somehow more broken than the most desperate of sobs.
“I guess I’ll die then. Again.” (The weight of the glare is palpable even through the blank helmet.) “Because none of that will bring my daughter back.”
