musesfool, posts by tag: writing: neuroses - LiveJournal

Sometimes I think of baking as my latest fandom, and never more so than yesterday, where at least two other people baked focaccia after I made my post. *g*

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Whenever some kind of fannish meme goes around, I save a copy for when I have run out of things to post about or when I want more than the usual level of interaction or because the questions strike me as really interesting, but I've come to the conclusion that those head canon/personal fanon memes are really not for me, mostly because... I don't have a lot of things that I carry from story to story? Like, there are a couple of minor details that I always use - Dean is a Cubs fan, Sirius likes his coffee black, but like, backstory-wise or in terms of the usual questions on those lists, I feel like the answer depends on so much context that isn't given. What story am I writing? Who is in the relationship? When is it happening in their timeline? Because someone's favorite sex act or sleeping position or whatever will probably change, depending on who they're having sex or sleeping with, or whatever. So much depends on what the story requires. There's a lot of different ways to arrive at a specific characterization, and the nuances of it can vary, once again, depending on the story being told.

This is one of those areas where I feel like I must be doing it wrong, compared to other people, but to me, being too married to too many specific details really closes off what I can or can't write. And I do feel like this happens to me anyway, once I'm in a fandom for a while, that I start to forget interesting areas that could be explored or different angles to take on things. And while I like some of the constraints that writing fanfic puts on me (there's a reason I don't enjoy writing original fiction), I already feel hamstrung by my own inability to write so many things I would like to write (mostly so I would have them to read), and I feel like adding more constraints in the form of hard-and-fast head canon is counterproductive for me.

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Speaking of stories I don't have the ability to write, I am trying to convince fox1013 to write me the story of Natasha Romanoff's boarding school for young lady crimefighters, where Kate and Cassie and Rikki and Anya and Nico and Karolina and Molly and Gert etc. would all be students. I am even trying to convince her to import some DCU ladies currently being ignored or badly handled in their own canon (you know you want Oracle on your faculty).

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July 2013 writing roundup

we are thunder wrapped in cellophane (@ AO3)
Avengers (2012); Steve/Bucky; pg; 2120 words
This year, he's got Bucky back, which means that no matter what they do, it's going to be the best birthday Steve's ever had.

The Wake Up Call (@ AO3)
Push; Nick/Cassie; adult; 2,375 words
Nick knows he needs Cassie--loves her--more than anything or anyone else in the world. But it's not until this moment that he recognizes that he wants her.

not gonna get too sentimental (at AO3)
Teen Wolf; Allison/Lydia; adult; 1,615 words
When Allison gives Lydia some self-defense training, she learns a few things too.

three fandoms! f/f, m/m, and m/f! I feel like this is very representative of me as a writer, for all that it's only three small stories. Someday I will finish other things again. Sigh. Part of my difficulty is that I can't sustain my own excitement without other people's encouragement and nobody else cares. So I have to wait until I can get self-motivated, which doesn't always happen when I can just read or watch tv or look at tumblr instead of writing. I used to be better at it. I don't know.

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Top 5 Songs - July 2013

5. Can't Steal Your Heart Away - Empires

4. Bobby Jean - Bruce Springsteen

3. Teenage Rebellion - Gaslight Anthem

2. Kansas - Vienna Teng

1. Jealous of Your Cigarette - Hawksley Workman

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In one of the comments on this post about single servings of sangria (say that five times fast!), someone mentioned 10 second sangria:

Tinto de Verano (10 second sangria):

Ingredients:

Yellow Tail Shiraz (or similar inexpensive red wine)
Lemon-lime soda or Sparkling Lemonade
Fill a glass with ice. Add equal parts wine and soda or lemonade. Serve.

I went with a $10 bottle of pinot grigio instead of shiraz, because I prefer white wine and will drink it on its own if this didn't work, and I also froze some grapes to go along with my ice cubes, and it is very tasty. Will drink again.

In the course of writing this post, I have refilled my glass. *g*

I also made a no-bake Kahlua cream pie (pic). L. cancelled our dinner party that was scheduled for tomorrow, but I was so curious about this recipe that I decided to make it anyway. I used Oreos for the crust instead of chocolate wafers, and like an idiot, I forgot to spray the pie plate, so it is a little difficult to get out of the pan, but that's really a small complaint that can be fixed next time. It is somewhat more bowl intensive than I realized, and I misread and used the smaller bowl for the chocolate and the larger bowl for the whipped cream, so I ended up folding the chocolate into the whipped cream instead of v.v., but I think it turned out fine. It's very sweet, though. I might have to convince L. to meet me over the weekend so I can foist some off on her.

If you are looking for an easy no-bake summer pie (and don't need it to be vegetarian - this has gelatine in it), you probably can't go wrong with this one.

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I am amused - and pleased - at the headlines about the Mets' rookie pitchers Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler after they won both games of a doubleheader yesterday in Atlanta - 'pair of aces' and 'dynamic duo'. I didn't see Harvey's game (he took a no-hitter into the seventh, and only a mistake by the first baseman kept it from going longer) but Wheeler managed to get over some early wildness and work through a couple of tough innings to get the win in his first major league start. I try never to get my hopes up when it comes to the Mets, but this could be the start of something good. Not this season, which is pretty much done for already, but next year and the year after that.

In other sports news, I guess it's good that the Rangers hired Alain Vigneault? Maybe they will actually learn how to play offense again, especially on the power play? I guess we'll see.

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Reading Wednesday!

What I've just read

Since last we spoke, I finished When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, which I enjoyed immensely, possibly because I was 9 years old in 1979 when the story was set, and also obsessed with A Wrinkle in Time (okay, no, technically it wasn't until 1980 that I read/loved/used the L'Engle books for all my book reports etc. but close enough for these purposes) so Miranda felt really familiar to me. It reminded me more of The Young Unicorns in terms of L'Engle's books, and also From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, so I think nostalgia plays a large part in loving this book, but I think it does a good job with a young narrator, so that you as the reader know stuff she obviously doesn't. So the big twist isn't really a surprise? But still, I liked the book a lot.

I also read Emilie and the Hollow World by Martha Wells, which was also highly enjoyable, though I was shocked when Emilie said she was 16, because she comes across as no older than 13 at most, and the book reads more like a middle grade than a YA to me, and she spends a little too much time eavesdropping and tagging along before she really gets in on the action, but still, enjoyable steampunk hijinks, and recommended if it comes into your hands.

And as I mentioned the other day, between books, I reread Devil's Cub, which is my favorite Heyer. There are certainly some iffy things in it - not just the class issues, but also Vidal's treatment of Mary early on (he forcibly abducts her and there is some violence involved) - but ( Collapse )

What I'm reading now

Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, which became available (along with three other books) from NYPL almost immediately after I said I had no more library books out. *snerk* I'm about halfway through and I find it a really enjoyable/fascinating thought experiment - it's an alternate history where 99% of Europe was wiped out by the Black Plague, so China, India, and the various Islamic empires are the major powers in the world. I'm not particularly emotionally invested in the characters, mostly because ( Collapse )

I'm enjoying it but we'll see how it goes, since I'm only halfway through.

What I'm reading next

Well, in addition to The Years of Rice and Salt, I also have Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen (as recced by one of you), and The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker from the library, since they all became available at once. Oops? And The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, which I had forgotten I'd pre-ordered, but which doesn't have a due date, so it'll have to wait.

I'll let you know how that all goes. *snerk*

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I feel like it is time for a wsip roundup, even though I don't think much has actually changed.

Right now, I'm currently paying attention to four stories, though there is a fifth that rotates through when I think about things that I want to happen in it, so:

( Collapse )

There's a few others on the list, but these are the ones I'm actively working on now.

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Yesterday was my 10 year lj-versary. devildoll is still laughing at me and my claim that I wouldn't like LJ but would only use it for commenting (and icons). Little did I know, huh?

Thank you to marciaelena, mousapelli, and deirdre_c for the adorable blue dragons. ♥

It's also - either today or tomorrow, I'm not exactly sure - 14 years ago that I delurked on alt.tv.homicide. I know it was at the end of February 1998. While that is not as long as some people, I feel like I have been in fandom FOREVER. And I've mostly enjoyed myself a lot. I just kind of can't wrap my head around either of those numbers. 14 years is, like, A WHOLE HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMAN (aka, the majority of tumblr's population. *weeps*) HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

Anyway. I posted fluffy Clint/Darcy fic for my LJ-versary:

I Give You Love, Baby, Not Romance (at AO3)
Avengers (2012); Darcy/Clint; pg; 2,340 words
Clint thinks he and Darcy are dating; Darcy thinks Clint's just got a bad case of the beer goggles.

This was written yesterday in between bouts of sobbing as I rewatched Return of the King for the first time in, like, five years. I think it's cute, anyway, and that's a title I've wanted to use for a while. Thank you to the lovely people who've commented. I really appreciate it.

Somehow, everything I wrote on Saturday had to be deleted. Every wip I worked on, every new thing I tried to start (I swear, laurificus, I wrote 300 words of Troy/Abed/Annie that were so terrible they were best consigned to permanent deletion, though I would still like to write that story eventually), all of it was so unrelentingly godawful.

My big excitement for the weekend - other than rewatching LotR - was that this time, I added dried cranberries to my biscotti. Yeah, I'm living the wild life these days, folks.

I did update unfitforsociety with 38 recs for February 2012:

*8 Captain America movieverse
*7 Avengers movieverse, plus 2 Thor and 1 Avengers/Muppets crossover
*4 DCU
*4 Avatar: The Last Airbender
*4 The Losers
*2 West Wing
*2 Firefly, and 1 each Gilmore Girls, Lilo & Stitch, Push, Sports Night, and White Collar

Read, love, comment. <3

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Ugh. Work. I just got hit with the 3 pm doldrums and I want to crawl under my desk and nap. Ah well, only an hour and a half until I can go home.

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The problem with taking something that is basically fantasy/id-fic and turning it into something that will actually work as a story for other people to read isn't just leaching it of a lot of its fantasy/id-sparking power by nailing down all the details, but also having to put it in some kind of narrative frame where it makes sense in ways that are more than, "dear god, that's hot."

Thankfully, I have angelgazing to tell me how to do it with this particular story. I don't even know, but I feel like no matter what I do with this story, it's just going to be a giant case of "my id, let me show you it." I mean, I'm not going to let that stop me, but still. I'm thinking about it way more than I have in a long time.

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If I see this commercial for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close again, I am going to punch someone. But it does remind me of a moment I really liked in last night's Fringe: ( Collapse )

I also have a hard time getting onboard with a lot of the criticism of this season's Fringe, not because I don't see things wrong, but because I have reached a stage where I love all Olivias, so I don't feel alienated from her this season. I just want her, and Altlivia, and every other Olivia to just be happy. I mean, I'm not saying that there couldn't be a universe where I didn't love Olivia? But it hasn't happened yet.

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On the other hand, I could stand to see the commercial for Haywire a little more. Good lord, I hope it's as awesome as it looks, and she just beats the crap out of every guy in her way.

And also the Red Tails commercial. Please don't suck!

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That page 45-love life meme made me think of this poem:

Elegy For My Sex Life

Goodbye, closing credits and kissing
till the lights came up.
Farewell, feathers and patchouli, slowdancing and waterbeds,
which I worshipped like Stations of the Cross.
Stickiness and soapslide, all that gliding and lingering:
goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Adios, palm-ache and saddle-ache and you, too, rugburn.
Au revoir, opera gloves, black satin swallowing the elbow,
toasts and braggadocio, pearls sliding
from their silky thread.
Goodbye, sheer persimmon shawl
and "That’s a hell of a hello:"
So long, frontseat, against-the-wall, on-the-stairs.
How I'll miss you, backdoor and garter belts,
hosannas of gratitude and hymns of praise.
Can I hide my myrrh like a Magdalene?
Jasmine and cinnamon, wildest honey:
perfumes I won't break at your feet.

~Karen Kovacik

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I have been writing a lot of porn lately. I wonder what's up with that, but I don't want it to stop, so I'm not going to examine it too closely. I feel like I had my usual year-end writing malaise from the end of 2010 through the first few months of 2011, so I am going to ride this good writing brain, this first flush of fandom love, as far as I possibly can.

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I was looking at my last year fic in review post and the one thing I really wanted for 2011 was to be better at responding to feedback in a timely fashion, and I completely failed at that, but I am going to try to get it all answered by the end of the year (um, it's less that I have tremendous amounts and more that I let them all build up until it is a lot of comments cumulatively; I get squirrelly and avoidant for some reason, and then I feel like it has been too long, and then I feel like it shouldn't matter, because one thing I've always tried to do is respond to every feedback comment I get, so if you get a thank you comment from me sometime over the next week for a story I posted back in March or something, um, thank you? I really do mean it. I just get anxious about responding to comments sometimes and completely fail to do so).

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Since I need to finish the Darcy/Clint story sometime before Yuletide opens so people will actually read it, I of course have started, like, four other stories that seem to want to be written more. *hands* Brain, why do you do this to me? I need to finish this thing soon, because I do not want it to be like "The Weather Inside," which I started as a yuletide treat and then posted in October. Also, I'm afraid of what angelgazing and devildoll will do to me if I don't get it done. They know where I live!

Also, I will probably try to get a December recs update done this week before yuletide, so it doesn't get lost in the flood of yuletide recs. That way people who aren't scrambling to write treats or pinch hits have things to read before the archive opens.

And, oh yeah, I should probably do some work. I have a short week - I'm taking Thursday and Friday off (we get Monday as our observed holiday) - so I should clear some things off my desk.

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Have a poem:

Desserts

and afterwards
        travelling home
on the northbound train
my body is wired
        to the flavours
of childhood:
        aniseed
and mint
     and something sharp
or incompletely sweetened
        like the stalk
of rhubarb we would cut from old
allotments
     dipped
in stolen sugar
       reddled at the lips
and trying to imagine nights like this:
a butterkist warmth on my tongue
           and the craquelure
of egg-yolk
     and cream of the well
on the maze of your skin.

~John Burnside

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I've been counting up my stories to get a jump on my year in review post, though given that there are still 21 days left in the month, I hope I'm not done with writing this year (Darcy/Clint fake Christmas boyfriend has to be done by Christmas! and also white_lotus!), and I was looking over the navel-gazey questions, and man, I don't know.

So I ask you, if you've read some of my stuff this year:

Is there an overarching theme to my stories this year? If so, what is it?

What is the best story I've written this year? (alternately, as it may not be the same, what is your favorite of the stories I've written this year?)

What is the sexiest story I've written this year? The most fun?

Did anything I've written change your perception of a character (or characters)?

Did anything I've written surprise you?

Is there anything you wish I'd write?

Do you have any other questions about stuff I've written?

everything I wrote this year with the exception of the stuff posted so far in December and my yuletide story can be found either under the monthly writing roundup tag or via my pinboard index.

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ooh, the preview button is now below the update window in the updated beta update page (update no longer looks like a real word to me now)! yay! That makes much more sense to me.

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I did post a story yesterday:

Dreams have never made my bed (at AO3)
Push; Nick/Cassie; adult; 1500 words
Cassie's fourteen the first time she has a vision of Nick fucking her.

aka, 5 visions, but it's really 4 visions and one reality. Also, it's a drabble pyramid, because I apparently like making things hard on myself, but each section increases by 100 words, so section 1 is exactly 100, 2 is exactly 200, etc. until it hits section 5, which is 500 words. I wrote the first four sections Thursday night after I was supposed to be in bed, and then section 5 at work when I was supposed to be writing board minutes. *hands* I am a big fan of striking while the iron is hot, because I never know when it will stop working and I'll be stalled out on something I could have finished if I'd given up an hour or two of sleep.

I think that is the major difference between me now and me a few months ago - I'd gotten out of that mindset, where writing was more important to me than doing other things (like work, or sleeping) - and while it's less than optimal in my offline life to prioritize writing (especially at work!), I kind of like that I'm doing it again. Though I wish I could just get the fake Christmas boyfriend story out of my head and onto paper (screen?) so easily.

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Both yesterday and today, the alt-text on Dinosaur Comics has cracked me up. If I ever get a dog of my own, I might have to seriously consider naming it Rex Luthor.

Last night, mousapelli told me they were having crazy thunderstorms where she was, and that they were likely headed in my direction. Smash cut to sometime after 1 am and being woken up by HUGE THUNDER BOOMERS AND LIGHTNING. Ugh. I did not get a good night's sleep after that, so I got up about half an hour early and took a shower. Normally, I shower at night, so this was like a surprise extra shower with bonus hair washing! It doesn't quite make up for 30 minutes of lost sleep, but I also got to look at Tumblr before I went to work, so I guess it was all right.

I spent most of my morning, the parts where I wasn't on a conference call regarding pension plan audits (how is this my life? as our CFO said to me the other day, "the only people who love auditors are their mothers." I laughed. also, said conference call lasted only 20 of the 90 minutes it was scheduled for; note to self: Don't let Boss2 schedule things because he pads the schedule), tweaking Pinboard to be prettier, using stuff mentioned in here and here.

God, what would we do without murklins and all these awesome scripts? Now I just need to figure out how to change the format for how the dates display (I would prefer month-date-year to year-month-date, which is how it is now). And I just have to keep track of all the changes so I can also implement them at home. *snerk*

But I feel like I'm finally accepting that the way I used to use Delicious is not going to work anymore with the new version (though I still forget sometimes and save links there), and that I have to just go forward with Pinboard. Hence the prettifying. The one thing I miss is the ability to have the link visible in addition to the title and comments and tags - then when I was ready to make a recs post, I could just c&p into Word and code it rather than having to right click and copy each link individually. I know, I know, my life, so hard.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with Pinboard. Hopefully that will last for a while.

(I'm also trying to fight the urge to change the style of my DW, since I like the style I have, but there are so many other pretty ones!)

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I posted a story last night:

Pentimenti (at AO3)
Captain America (comics); Bucky, Steve; g; 1,480 words
Bucky always hated "The Gift of the Magi."

I am amused by that summary, since it basically appears to have fuck-all to do with the story (it's relevant, I swear!), which should more rightly be summarized, "Bucky has a nice wallow and buys Steve some art supplies," but that didn't amuse me as much. Also, the story is in second person, so if the seemingly useless summary doesn't drive you away, the POV choice will. *snerk*

No, seriously, though, I know some people are unhappy about kudos on AO3, feeling that they take away from people leaving actual comments, but I have to tell you, since I've started more frequently posting things that I know will only get one or two comments (five comments is considered a cornucopia in these parts these days!), I've been so grateful for kudos, because they tell me that there are other people interested in these stories that I want to tell, despite knowing that there really isn't much of an audience (besides me) for them, at least among the people reading this LJ/DW (I still have not sought out any comms for any of this stuff, and I probably won't).

I honestly think I get two or three kudos notifications every day on random stories, most of which got few comments when I posted them on LJ/DW.(Oddly enough, most of them are on the Dick/Jason stuff, which pleases me.) And most of them are anonymous, so I really don't think those folks would be commenting if there were no kudos function.

Let's face it, a story (by me) about Bucky buying Steve art supplies or teaching Kate Bishop to swing dance, or an animated!YJ M'gann/Artemis PWP is not really going to rack up comments and I don't expect them to - getting one or two is happy-making for me, because that means someone else liked this random thing I was interested in writing about. But getting a steady trickle of kudos on them long after I've moved on is even more pleasing, and I don't think that happens much with comments, at least not on the bulk of stuff I've written.

Obviously, I can only speak to my own experience with this. Others' mileage may vary.

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So I get these emails from SPIN even though I haven't been subscribed in forever, and today they were offering a download of a Nirvana tribute album but you have to like them on Facebook to get it and I do not have a FB account. Can anyone who is on FB help a sister out by downloading and sending it to me?

eta: Got it! Thanks, dhara. /eta

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Work was busy today and it was ludicrously hot out so of course my period showed up a week early. Ugh. I am eagerly counting down the days until menopause.

Also, it's too hot to cook. I might have to order a cheeseburger, but I'm afraid it also might be too hot to eat. Ugh. Maybe I'll just have ice cream for dinner.

My life, so hard.

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I see that "challenge me to write outside my comfort zone" meme is going around again, and while I think it's a really interesting thought experiment, I just don't really feel a need to write outside my comfort zone - whatever that means - unless a story really grabs me. I know that there's a lot of writing advice that says you should write the stories that scare you to write, or challenge yourself or not be self-indulgent, and if I were a more rigorous soul, I might do that, but it doesn't sound enjoyable to me at all. I am all about schmoopy self-indulgence.

I mean, I write stories I want to read and a lot of them are very deliberately comforting to me. I mean, I've written any number of things that have been difficult for me in one way or another (and I don't mean just in the getting the words out sense), but those have generally been stories that for some reason or other, I needed to tell, that I couldn't not tell, and a lot of them time, while I found the experience worthwhile, I can't necessarily say I enjoyed it. When writing is working for me, I enjoy it a lot. That to me is the main reward for all the times it makes me miserable. For the most part, it also means I can go back and reread a story that I wrote and enjoy it afterwards. (I also find that in fandom, a lot of the time, "stretching yourself" or "writing outside your comfort zone" is code for "write these things I like but you don't" and that just doesn't work for me.)

I mean, obviously, some people really dig on challenging themselves and stretching as a writer and whatever, and they adhere to rigorous standards and are very disciplined, and I find that admirable and I often enjoy their stories.

Me, I've never been very disciplined and have always been a seat-of-my-pants kind of writer. I write to entertain myself and, hopefully, some other people along the way. Sometimes, yeah, I get myself into something that is over my head and I have to figure out how to make it work on the fly. Sometimes I enjoy it, and sometimes I don't. But when I stop enjoying it, I stop doing it, as you can see by how little I've written this year. I'm just trying to get some of that joy back by writing things that make me happy.

Which leads us to the fact that I posted a story this morning:

your heartbeat for a thousand miles
DCU; Tim/Kon; pg; 1,380 words
Kon can hear Tim's heartbeat from further away than he'll ever admit, tracks it automatically when they're together, and sometimes, even when they're not.

This story is so far up in my comfort zone I should probably be embarrassed. *snerk* It has nightswimming, BFFs who banter and then make out. First kisses. Random dorkery. If you like those kinds of things, this might be the kind of thing you like. I mean, I almost used the summary "This is a kissing story," but amberlynne thought that gave the "plot" away, and we decided that "schmoopy schmoop" was a little too on the nose.

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Okay, in the time I spent writing this, I went from "food, meh" to "I could eat." So I guess cheeseburger it is!

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There was fic this morning:

Dig for Fire
X-Men: First Class; Charles, Alex, Scott Summers; g; 760 words
"I have a brother."

Seriously, I don't even know. If I were going to start writing XMM fic again, couldn't it at least have been angsty Charles/Erik instead of something about Scott? I mean, really? Why do I keep choosing to write stuff that other people don't care about reading? Sigh. I guess I still have a soft spot for Scott, though, after all these years. Movieverse Scott, I mean. In the comics he's a jerk. Though I think it's weird to position him as the younger brother, because he's kind of a quintessential older brother type, isn't he?

Speaking of fic I want to write that no one will read, I sort of want to write a small thing about Kon drawing the s-shield on his arm every morning with a sharpie, and Tim just being like, "really? This is how you entertain yourself?" And Kon's just like, "Smallville is boring. You don't even know!" and Tim's like, "Okay, but you couldn't find something that wouldn't give your secret identity away?" And Kon's just like, "what's the fun in that?" But then the next time Tim sees him, he's got, like, the Dark Mark sharpied onto his forearm or something.

It amuses me, anyway.

I finished reading the second volume of 52 this afternoon, which was more slogging and less amusing than volume 1. While they did cut back on the Booster Gold, as I had hoped, there was still way too much stuff I didn't care about and way too little Renee Montoya and the Question. (I did like Lex's response to the idea that Supernova might be resurrected!Kon, though.) Hopefully there will be more Renee and less random Lobo in the next volume. (Though it is, as always, lovely to see Starfire in action, even if she's stuck with a pair of guys I can't tell apart.)

Speaking of the DCU, I think this post does a pretty good job explaining why I have such a problem with them regressing Barbara from Oracle to Batgirl. because it absolutely feels like a regression of her character growth:

Barbara's evolution to Oracle was a wonderful piece of character growth. She didn't earn the title when she was shot by the Joker, which is arguably an example of a female character being wounded to generate emotional torque for a male lead (in this case her father). Barbara grew and defined herself into the provider of information, deciding not to be defined by her disability – not to be a victim, not to be a background character, not to be a burden, not to exist as simply another shameful failure of the men around her.

That's part of what's genuinely worrying about this, at least for me. The idea that comics treat the tragedy of losing mobility and then defining yourself on your own terms as something of a minor background event, which needs or deserves to be corrected.

[...]

To wipe away her empowerment like that, in order to replace her as a legacy character doesn't sit with me. "Batgirl" is a mantle that other characters have, and passes from generation to generation like a mask handed down. "Oracle" isn't just a mask or a persona, it's a conscious decision by a character to face their disability on their own terms. You can tell Batgirl stories with anyone. You can only tell Oracle stories with Barbara.

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