airawyn:daggerpen:gailsimone:airawyn:gailsimone:ihaveap...

airawyn:

daggerpen:

gailsimone:

airawyn:

gailsimone:

ihaveaphdinhorribleness:

liquidiousfleshbag:

gailsimone:

I moved my toes, Dinah.  I moved my toes.

This was inspired by Christopher Reeve.

I know many pwd have a problem with some of how Reeve talked about his paralysis, as something that could be ‘beaten,’ and that’s all perfectly valid. For many, that is never an option. And he had access to treatment most people would never be able to afford.

But I found some of his story very inspirational. After years of therapy, Reeve became able to move his wrist and a little bit of one hand, and he regained sensation in his legs. Now, this can’t happen to everyone in his situation. But he did work at it every agonizing day, and eventually, he could feel his family touching his legs, he could feel water in the therapy pool, and he could move his hand at least a bit. That sounds like not much, maybe.

But it must have felt like moving mountains to him.

I had been talking quite a bit with people at Reeve’s institute, which was doing research and rehab of this kind. And I felt we should reflect that a little bit in the book. We got tons of mail about it from pwd, almost all positive, I think they knew the story was intended to be hopeful, not castigating or condescending.

Again, it reminds me what an Oracle-shaped whole we have in comics right now. :(

my problem with oracle getting “cured” or however you wanna phrase it i don’t know is that it ALWAYS happens like that

disabled people in media never stay disabled AND actual people, they’re either evil or jokes, or they’re fixed before they can become one of those things

things like this encourages nondisabled people to think of disabled people as less than “normal” people, or just temporarily stuck in some awful place

fixing oracle was bullshit because it took away the one goddamned person in comics who looked like me

there are MILLIONS of fucking people in comics who can walk, did you really need to add another one

it was just nice to have one person who was in a wheelchair, and i could look at her and smile because she is like me

the thing is, yes, technically i can move my legs and walk, except for the part where i really can’t because it completely destroys and exhausts me

it’s so frustrating to see the one person like you “cured” when you will most likely never ever get that opportunity

it feels like a slight against me and against people like me

maybe it wasn’t meant that way

but it doesn’t stop it from feeling that way anyway

It’s totally understandable, and it sucks that ONE character had all that on her shoulders, when there should be LOTS of pwd characters people can look up to.

If there were a ton of PWDs in comics, it might be slightly less offensive to cure one. But there’s not. Don’t try to shift the blame, Gail.

“Shift the blame?” 

I’ve talked about this ENDLESSLY. I have said repeatedly that taking Oracle out left a huge hole in PWD representation of comics.

It was going to happen with or without me. I wanted it to be done as respectfully as possible. People can blame me for taking the assignment, certainly. But I have never denied that losing Oracle is a big deal. I’ve never tried to talk anyone out of being mad about it.

I said what I said here because it’s true, and irritating. It IS screwed up that one character in comics seemed to be holding the mantle of pwd representation on her shoulders. Saying that doesn’t discount anyone’s feelings about Oracle’s disappearance in the new universe, including my own, which I have stated so often people are sick of hearing me talk about it.

If I were trying to shift the blame, I wouldn’t be here talking about it constantly.

… can I… maybe… interject here?

Gail, you know the endless respect I have for you and your writing, but…
I really, really don’t think you should have taken the Batgirl assignment.

Like. Yes, it was going to happen with or without you, but your name being attached to it was a huge factor in the book’s success. Oracle fans trust you. People trusted you to handle that story properly. You saw the huge outcry when you were dismissed from the book, and all the people talking about how you were the reason they continued to buy the book.

And what’s more… there is no way to make removing Babs’s disabled status nonproblematic.

None.

Everything you have done, the respectful way you have treated the narrative, the questions you have dealt with, that has all made the story less gross, but in the end, it’s still gross. And more than that… by choosing to have Babs be “cured” via surgery rather than deaging her to before the Joker and his gun, I feel like you’ve made it almost impossible for Babs to be Oracle again without some other huge continuity shakeup.

Like, say the current climate changes and we do want to return Babs’s disabled status. What happens? Does she spontaneously revert to her old injuries? Does she get in another accident? It’s a plot very difficult to do without it feeling contrived or gross. The thing with the other adaptations of Babs as Batgirl, such as in Young Justice, is that you always get the feeling that Oracle is in her future. It’s always possible somewhere down the road. But now, it feels like Oracle is gone. Not just absent the possibility from the future, but absent apparently from the past, as there is no indication of her as Oracle in the DCnU.

And what’s more, it’s a huge downgrade for Babs. She used to be the (wo)man behind the curtain, the shadowy figure whose name the most powerful feared. She had a wide network of operatives, a huge circle of friends and allies, nearly all of whom are now absent from the DCnU, while Babs herself runs around Gotham kicking criminals in the head. She was a powerful woman and an icon for people with mobility issues. I admittedly don’t know much about what has been happening in your Batgirl run, because I have been purposefully avoiding it due to my qualms with both the decision to remove Babs’s disability and with the DCnU in general, but I really don’t know in what way the DCnU Babs is anything but a downgrade in terms of competency, power, and, most importantly, media representation.

Yes, it would have happened with or without you. But you still chose to help make it happen. You chose to write this when your refusal would have spoken volumes, to cheerlead for the DCnU rather than condemn it, and the fact that you have openly criticized it doesn’t negate that.

Daggerpen’s commentary sums up my feelings pretty well. It’s not our place to say whether Gail “should” have taken the job, as others have pointed out. But I think that having taken the job, and having written, endorsed, promoted and benefited from Barbara’s magical cure*, she’s not in a position to say, “it wasn’t my choice”. Maybe it wasn’t her choice to cure Barbara, but it was her choice to put her name and reputation behind the decision. 

(*The cure may not have been literal magic, but having spent the last year going through a number of incredibly miserable attempts at treating my chronic illness while my former role model bounced all over Gotham, I don’t really care about the technicalities.)

I don’t think that’s what I said at all. I never denied that I made the decision.

Why people can’t just respond to what is actually, said, I have no idea.