#writing while disabled

[wisterianightmare]

Writing while disabled has been so, so informative to my process; and while some of that information gathering has been devastatingly frustrating I can’t pretend it isn’t making me a more mindful writer.

I’d told myself that once I’d finished “X” number of chapters in my main WIP (you know, the dark JJK slowburn? The one that’s only halfway-ish outlined but still somehow has a 160k wordcount?) I would begin slowly posting. This hasn’t been the reality, mainly because as I’m progressing it’s been very clear that the parts written earlier aren’t of the same caliber of the parts written more recently. You might think: “yeah, that’s obvious Wisty. Drafts are a thing, and we get better the more we practice,” but I’ve never had to write a full-blown second draft before. Maybe that’s wild, but it’s true.

In the past, I’ve been able to edit as I go. I’ve been able to hold onto a complicated thread of thought well enough to really dig into dynamic descriptions and themes without losing sight of what’s coming to fill the rest of the blank pages. I could go back and expand upon things, but I never really needed to evolve the rest of what was already there. My first draft and my final draft were one and the same. Now, half of the time I can’t remember the way my sentence was meant to end while in the middle of writing it. It’s a very different experience.

I’ve been trying my best not to let the frustration (and let’s be honest, the grief, because there is a level of mourning for being trapped inside of the fog of your own mind and being acutely aware of it) keep me from reaping the benefits of actually being forced to slow down and analyze the technical quality of my writing. Let me tell you, I have learned so, so much.

Where my prose used to be florid, I’m now doing more telling than showing. I’m relying on simpler metaphors, failing to layer them as I build the narrative. My characters’ introspection is too clinical, and more reliable than I need it to be… the list goes on. As I struggle with word recall and coherency, the art is just not as artful.

But in addition to being able to identify these things as problems (which is half the battle to be sure), I can also clearly see my good days. I can see where I was able to use my outline as that thread of thought - that reminder of where I’m aiming. I can hear bits and pieces of rhythm that’s beginning to cumulate into voice. Slowing down and relearning my foundational writing skills has clearly fostered improvement, and while my brain might not be the same as it was before, I can be happy and confident in the fact that I’m still able to learn.

[delusionalisted]

“Low Spoon” witchcraft doesn’t exist.

This is a post for all my disabled siblings. (But it applies to broke or low-income siblings as well.)

By the way, you heard me. What does exist is capitalism, consumerism and scarcity, all things that don’t belong to witchcraft. Witches in the past were mostly poor, unprivileged and unhealthy individuals with just one skill: knowledge. Yes, for today’s americentric standards they’d have been called “low-spoons practitioners”.

No fancy candles? No cauldron? Just one heavily used tarot deck?

Yes, no fancy candles Susan, you can keep those paraffin toxins to yourself.

Cauldron, Deborah? I have no money to waste for your pinterest aesthetics. We cook in this house, I can simply use a kitchen pot.

Mais oui Elizabeth, just one old tarot deck. It’s used my dear Elizabeth, you know… that’s something that happens when you actually use… tarot instead of purchasing 15 decks, then ending up using just one or two of them and leaving the other 13 to collect dust and resentment towards you.

*Sigh*

This is all to say, witchcraft doesn’t need a 9-steps process to be achieved. Calling it “low-spoons” practice just means “high spoons” practice is the norm. It is not. Most importantly, it never was. You don’t need 30 specific crystals to perform a spell, you don’t even need one most of the times.

— Addition: If you fit into the “Low Spoons” type of witch and you noticed that your spells or rituals don’t work, then let me share one of the possible reasons why they fail: you followed a “low spoons” recipe or spell preparation, consciously or unconsciously gave the title “too much power” (your subconscious registered your spell as something lesser than a proper ceremony) and any energy that you and the ingredients released just plopped like a pudding on the floor.

Branding something as “lesser” in spirituality can lead to two results: failure or high delays. Yes, the herbs you use still have, nourish and release power, but without YOUR faith, their power alone can do so much; in most cases, your subconscious skepticism rejects your desired manifestation leading to a delayed or completely failed magickal attempt.

[sky-scribbles]

There are a lot of things to love about the SSV Normandy. It’s a symbol of cooperation between two species historically at odds. It’s a miracle of engineering, a technological masterpiece that could alter every pattern of space warfare. Its crew is the highest calibre that the Alliance has to offer, bolstered by multispecies allies: an emblem of flying hope.

It also has far, far too many flashing lights. Everywhere.

One hand pressed to the wall to keep himself steady, the other pressed against his forehead as if that’s going to do any good, Kaidan shuffles down the hall toward the med bay. Every light panel and display interface feels like a laser drill boring directly through his eyes, sounds reverberate against the inside of his skull, and his sense of balance is a distant, pleasant memory. Kaidan sucks in a tight breath between his teeth. It’s going to be okay. He can do this. He’s done it before.

He drags himself the last few feet, and the med bay doors slide open. Kaidan opens up his omni-tool – god, why are those so bright, too? – and does what he’s done a hundred times, scanning the medical interface so that the med system logs him. Doctor Chakwas isn’t here, which means she’s on her rest shift, but that’s fine. The med system will alert her if there’s a problem.  

Kaidan, turns, so ready to collapse into the nearest med bed – except he can’t. Because there’s someone already in it.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Hey, Tali.’

‘Hey, Lieutenant.’ She still seems shy about using his first name. Maybe it’s a habit from being raised on board ships, or maybe she’s just not sure if she’s allowed. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I will be once the pain meds kick in.’ Kaidan makes it to the next bed along and finally, finally lies down and shuts his eyes. ‘Doctor Chakwas is just… pretty strict about me coming here whenever a migraine kicks in. Just in case it’s a sign of something going wrong with my implant.’

Through the fog of everything hurts, it finally surfaces in his brain that Tali in the med bay is… that’s bad, right? ‘What about you? Are you, you know –?’

Okay, he’s not sure how to finish that sentence. There’s probably not a polite way to say hey, are you here because you’ve picked up a fatal illness?

He cracks one eye open, just enough to see her looking glumly at him. He’s not sure how he can tell that she’s glum when all he can see is her eyes, but yeah. She’s glum. ‘You know how I took a hit on Feros?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And how I disinfected it, and used my patch kit on the suit breach, and told Shepard I was fine?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I was not fine.’ She slumps down miserably. ‘My throat is full of painful slime, my sinuses are on fire, and my halesh –��� Okay, that’s obviously some piece of quarian anatomy – ‘is more gummed up than I can describe.’

Kaidan shuts his eyes again. ‘Well, my skull feels like it’s slowly contracting and crushing my brain, so… I sort of feel you.’

She laughs weakly. ‘I should have run an extra med scan once I got back to the Normandy. I just – I wanted to help with the engine maintenance today. And there’s this combat drone design I’m working on. And now…’ There’s a sound of movement; Kaidan gets the impression that she’s gesturing at the med bay in angry helplessness.

‘I feel that too.’ And he does. He really does. This isn’t the worst migraine he’s ever had – he can actually hold a conversation, which some days would be beyond him. But it’s… it’s not great. And he had things to do. Ash was running a drill and wanted him to look over her plans. He had a cleaning shift at fourteen hours. Shepard wanted to talk strategy for Noveria.  And yes, he knows he has a right to take time off for a medical issue. He knows he’s no use to Ash or Shepard or anyone when he can’t even walk in a straight line. But knowing that doesn’t quite get rid of the squirm in his belly, the one that feels like letting people down.

Tali’s quiet for a minute, aside from the ever-present, barely-audible hum of her suit systems, and the occasional sniff from behind her helmet. Then she says, unexpectedly, ‘I’m just… I’m so tired. You know what I mean?’

Kaidan’s head throbs. He swallows. ‘Oh, yeah.’

The constant vigilance. Always having to be careful about where he goes – is this room too bright? Is this one too loud? – in case something triggers another bad spell. Taking hits to the head in a fight that anyone else could just shrug off, but that for him mean another trip to the med bay to make sure his implant isn’t damaged. Trying to do his job and suddenly finding, no, he can’t, because his body has decided that today’s the day he just doesn’t get to function.

Tali… she must go through the same awful deal, just in a different flavour. Always being careful, so careful. Someone else’s minor injury being her okay, let’s get a med check to make sure I won’t die. It’s not the same, of course: Kaidan can eat food without filtering it, touch people without protective layers, see people’s faces without a tinted mask. Still… there’s a tone in her voice that he knows from his own.

There’s a heavy silence. Then Tali says, ‘You know what’s really stupid? I left my datapad in my cabin, so I can’t even watch vids.’

Kaidan smiles. He’s seen her down in Engineering, a few times, hands flying around over the machinery, rocking back and forth on her heels. Idleness obviously doesn’t suit her. ‘You can borrow mine, if you like.’

‘Really?’ Her voice is already brighter. ‘I mean – won’t the noise will make you feel worse?’

‘Nah, I’ll be good.’ He’s not just saying it; there’s a blissful numbness creeping through his head which means that his meds are finally getting to work. He fishes the datapad from his pocket, taps in his passcode, and hands it over. ‘What kind of vids do you like?’

Her whole being perks up – tone, body, everything. ‘Oh, all of them.Any genre, any species. I mean… asari vids can be a bit long. I mean, they’re made by people who can spend a decade making a vid and a whole day watching it. Turians… their vids can be a bit depressing. There’s a lot of ‘this war ended with almost everyone dead, but one turian is still standing, so it’s a victory!”

‘What about quarians? What kinds of stories do your people tell?’

A small laugh echoes inside the helmet. ‘Quarian vids are pretty limited by environment. We don’t have a lot of varied sets to work with. So we tell the best long-running dramas. There’s one ship in the Flotilla that’s been hosting the same series for over eighty standard years now. Following the crew as they change over time, that sort of thing.’ She taps the base of her helmet. ‘It’s pretty good, but… I think if you watched it, you’d think there were a lot more explosions, murders and shipwide romantic entanglements in the Flotilla than there actually are.’

‘Human dramas are like that too.’

Tali laughs. ‘Quarian dramas make human dramas look relaxed.’

Kaidan finds he’s actually able to grin. ‘So what do human vids tell you about us?’

Her helmet tilts as she considers. ‘That you’re very individualistic. I mean, not every human culture. But you put a lot of focus onto characters and personal journeys.’ She scrolls down the datapad screen – looking through vid lists, presumably – then stops. It’s hard to tell, but Kaidan thinks she might be frowning. ‘I did notice… in a lot of human media, the biotics are…’

Another insistent pulse of pain through his temples. Kaidan sighs. ‘Crazy extremists?’

‘Yes. Do you… do you mind if I ask why that is?’

‘No, it’s fine.’ Kaidan turns onto his back and stares up at the dim ceiling. ‘A lot of the early generation of biotics, the ones who got the same implants as me… let’s just say I got off lightly. Most ended up with much more serious medical conditions. And when people found out about the side effects of the L2 implants, the media got the bit between its teeth and –’ Yeah, no, that wasn’t going to translate. ‘Sorry. Human saying. They got a certain impression, and they ran with it.’

Tali’s quiet for several seconds. Kaidan twists his head to face her, and sees the pale eyes behind the mask giving him a long, steady look.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. And then, after a moment, ‘They tell lies about us, too.’

Kaidan holds her gaze, and feels terribly, achingly sad. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I bet they do.’

 The way people look at Tali as she walks through the Presidium… it’s familiar. Not quite the same. There’s a note of scorn in the looks they give to Tali – but there’s suspicion, too, and that’s something he knows. All the times back on Earth, after he got back from Jump Zero, when he shook someone’s hand or opened a door, and their eyes found the implants. They way they stared at him like he was a loaded gun. All the documents he had to fill out to do anything, the knowledge that any government he lived under would always be hovering a few steps away, keeping tabs, making sure.

Remembering Rahna – remembering that obvious, instinctive fear in her eyes – is an old memory now, the kind that’s a faded scar. But he remembers the shock of it, back when he was seventeen. When no one had looked at him like that before, and it was dizzying and new and felt like a hole in his gut.

He bets Tali has that hole in her gut all the time.

Kaidan pushes himself up a little – which makes his brain spin, but he manages it – and gives Tali a smile. ‘Well. Let’s look for something that gets us both right.’

‘Definitely.’ She flicks through the options for a minute more, then pauses. ‘Have you ever seen Fleet and Flotilla?’

‘I think I’ve heard of it.’ There’s a faint memory of seeing an ad for it, maybe, and thinking it was the kind of thing he’d have loved as a kid. Space exploration. Justice. Love. ‘The… war romance, right?’

‘Yes!’ Tali’s legs bounce. ‘It’s – keelah, it’s so good, it’s – it’s about this girl, Shalei, who’s on her pilgrimage. And she’s interested in the geth, because she’s got this dream of finding a way to defeat them and take back the Homeworld, right? And when she finds something, she goes to the Citadel for help, but no one will listen except this one turian called Bellicus –’

‘Hold up. Wasn’t that… exactly what you were doing when we met you? Minus the turian, I mean.’

Tali ducks her head, suddenly shy. ‘I… I really, really like the vid.’

No kidding. Kaidan smiles. ‘So let’s watch it.’

His head still feels like a bombsite, and when he thinks about all the things he wants to be doing for his crew and isn’t, the rest of him hurts too. But maybe he’s still doing something for his crew, sitting in the med bay with his sick squadmate – his sick friend – and sharing her favourite vid with her. Maybe he’s doing something for him, too. He doesn’t do that too often.

Tali props the datapad up on the table between their beds, her whole body one big smile. ‘You’re going to love this,’ she promises, and presses play.

[thousandyearphantombunker]

"we want more mentally ill/disabled characters with ugly symptoms!"

You guys can't handle lapis lazuli tony stark or hank pym! You guys can barely contain your ableism toward the hulk! You guys hate the good doctor for all the wrong reasons! You made fun of his speech patterns and his meltdowns wtf like I'm sorry the only autistic person you've supported have been the perfect non annoying type- but too many of especially as children are like shawn- they talk weird and don't understand what's so offensive about what they said

You guys keep saying Lapis should just be rewritten into a villain! I don't like how the show handled her but like your really gonna make the girl who shows ugly bad symptoms of ptsd into villain? You guys keep trying to make hank into a villain or rewrite his past- god forbid a character have really sevre ugly symptoms that causes them to make decisions that permanently effect the story but have them still be heroes! God forbid Ironman have npd and be a hero! Let's shame MCU Bruce for his mental illness for being unable to do things because of it! God as soon as a character with a mental illness or developmental disorder or low IQ shows actual symptoms and behaviors (ei: acts like how someone with the disorder in question acts- you know the main part of having a fucking disorder) you get pissy and pile on the shame- yeah jen you do control your anger better than bruce- you can also stand better than Charles fucking Xavier! Yeah your smarter than a guy with a low IQ want a cookie?

I'm never gonna be one of those people who tell others to stop writing disabled villains or that writing a character that deals with internalized ableism (disabled people like any group of people can be total prices of shit, and I'm sorry not everyone is content and accepting of their disabilities and some of us take comfort in characters that struggle with being angry because of their problems) but Jesus Christ when a heroic character with ugly symptoms who makes cruel decisions or has 'bratty' or 'immature' moments can we let them stay heroes? Can we let them have a disorder without piling on the shame that we are inferior because we can't do something everyone else can- because that's literally what a disability is! Can they still be heroes?

Do we have to use intellectual/developmental disability as a shorthand for anti intellectualism and being a gross annoying psycho

Do we have to make every heroic character with aspd or npd into a villain or change their disability to autism because it's 'more sympathetic' as if lack of empathy isn't a goddamned symptom of many disabilities like PTSD and autism- You can headcanon tony as having autism- that's cool by me but it's clear some of y'all do it to make him a 'woobie'- which is infantalizing btw but also it's because some of y'all are ableist toward people with npd

I hate that the only acceptable 'ugly symptoms' are things like forgetting to shower or brush your teeth every once in a while or being a bit irritable and not stuff like burning bridges or having explosive outburts

Also it's not a mental illness unless it effects your behavior?

Im not saying that we should just accept and allow mentally ill/intellectually disabled people/characters to get away with bad behaviors unpunished but can they stay heroes? Can they still be respectable?

"we want more characters with ugly symptoms"

Yet

You people get offended by low functioning autistic people existing! You get mad at them for being incontinent or nonverbal/making strange noises or having scary anger issues or IQs low enough that they will never be independent you get mad at them for not showing the 'appropriate' reactions to things they may or may not fully understand- you hate people with sensory issues -

You don't want mentally ill/disabled characters- you want characters with the labels of mental disabilities without any of the ugly strange or off putting behaviors mental/intellectual deficiencies/issues cause- you want a romantic tragedy!

You shame people with Alzheimer's for FORGETTING stuff and LOSING SKILLS 'yeah yeah you are superior to your uncle because you can remember stuff but can you remember it's a fucking disease! you people are cruel

Yes you are technically superior to disabled people because you are capable of things we aren't and you have better character and you can control yourself but guess what? Those people you hate for being incapable of that shit have disabilities it's not our faults! It's the fucking definition of a disability! Like yeah it is a skill issue and we're just 'worse' than nondisabled with us lacking self control and having lower IQs and bad mental processing- yeah it is because we're lacking in some capacity that's like the definition disability you can't say you support disabled people and then turn around and say shit about how your better than these people because you can talk or take care of yourself

Hank Pym and Lapis Lazuli should get called out for acting like assholes and pieces of shit but I am firmly against turning one of few heroic characters who actively struggle with psychosis and delusions into another 'psycho' villain and I'm firmly against saying Lapis is just as bad as Jasper and using symptoms of her PTSD as signs she should be rewritten into a villain- I want them to be held accountable not turned into straight up evil guys or dear god washing out their problematic qualities until they're palatable/relatable to a neurotypical audience to make them good guys when they are already good guys!

Can people who do bad things because of their disabilities still be heroes? Can they be allowed to get better or do they have to accept that having ugly symptoms means being the bad guy? Fucking hell this is why I side eye anyone who acts like mental illness/developmental/cognitive or mental etc disabilities are more destigmatized than physical disabilities (trust me they aren't)

Tldr let characters with ugly symptoms be heroes let your characters with mental disorders act like they have a disorder and let said characters be heroes inspite of it!

[rain-after-thunder]

Disabled Aelwyn who uses crutches.

Aelwyn who can’t go back to school to finish her wizzard studies, who starts researching different ways to bend magic to her will.

Aelwyn, who has always had a knack for creating new spells, starting to tinker at her own crutches, weaving wards into the framework.

Aelwyn, for who good is not good enough, caves and asks Gorgug for help. Who finds a way to make her crutches extend, bend and move to support her arms, elbows, shoulders. Makes them connect to her back, her hips, down her legs .

They no longer look much like crutches anymore, it’s a thin, light framework that supports her entire body, that moves her exactly the way she wants, that allows her to stand with her back straight for more than 5 minutes for the first time in two years. The exoskeleton glows with abjurative runes and the outline of a powerfull ward is visible over her body, deflecting blows like steel armor.

New spells rest in her memory, mechanical and precise if nature in a way that the arcane inks in her spelbook can’t articulate. Spare the Dying, Resistance, Cure Wounds, Sanctuary.

Her joints still ache, she tires fast and even after all this time it is still hard to control the venom in her words, still hard to accept help and kindness without it feeling like a wool blanket on freshly flayed skin. But she has found something that is wholly hers, found something to be proud of that isn’t tinged with approval from her parents.

Aelwyn still can’t walk without support, but the frame folding her up is crafted by her own hands. Maybe everything will be allright.

[chronicallycouchbound]

I wish I could go back in time and give 16-year-old me a hug and tell them that when the doctors say that you’ll be in a wheelchair in your 20s, that it’s gonna be okay and you can put stickers on it!! You will love your disabled self and be so happy in your disabled body and feel the love of a beautiful community that welcomes you with open arms. You will realize you were disabled long before you used a wheelchair but never knew the words for it. You will create accessible spaces that not just allow disabled people, but celebrate disabled people. You don’t have to cry or think no one will love you. You will be okay.

[tyetyetyetyetyetye]

New shameless hc: mickey is dyslexic, like obviously not diagnosed, he probably doesn't even fully process there's anything going on, he's always had a hard time reading and writing, it's whatever, he dropped out of school in like 9th grade, he can read, it just takes him longer, but he's always been good at math, he's never had any issue solving a math problem, it comes to him without having to think, so what if he spells Gallagher wrong, Ian knew what he was trying to write, he's a little embarrassed when he spells some shit wrong (i.e. the open relationship scene were Mickey doesn't want to show Ian his paper even though he obviously wants to be monogamous)

[corvid-language-library]

Damnnnn I just got wind that the NaNoWriMo website's shutting down

[extreme-dyke-syndrome]

Currently mourning the fact that some of my friends didn't know me before I was in pain all the time.

I was different. Just as cynical, but I had momentum. I moved with a constant trajectory.

I wish they knew me before I got slower.

[chicken-blitz13]

Ok just with a little idea for this lady.

Nayadi has asthma, she dealt with it since she was a pup and her bio mask and extra mask would fit her needs acting as an inhaler (think of the 2nd mask city hunter in that one scene). She's fine not wearing it in Yautja Prime at times but other planets like earth can be difficult, especially in polluted areas.

[girlypopinspos]

Everyone is so damn Puritan now when it comes to queer characters, or any characters who aren't Straight, Cisgender, Non-Disabled in any way, Christian White Men™️, and it's ironic — they're like their own version of the Moral Majority.

If people who Aren't Like You (whatever that is) need to see every fictional character who is Like You (whatever that is) portrayed as a boring, one-dimensional Pure, Wholly Good saint in order to believe you should have basic human rights, while characters who are Like Them (whatever that is) can be flawed and complex, or even villains... then they were never going to see you as human beings worthy of basic human rights to begin with.

Now read that again.

[unicornpopcorn14]

Up a Blind Alley

For @bsd-disability-week-2024 Day 6: PTSD (+Dissociation)

[saturnniidae]

Nothing quite as personally devastating as growing to dislike something that you used to genuinely enjoy bc of the fandom. and never over petty drama, more just racism and ableism from white and able-bodied fans who refuse to acknowledge what they're doing getting genuinely unbearable

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

banging my head against the wall while i say: "relatability is not the be all end all of writing a character. saying that you don't find a character relatable/you wouldn't have made the same choices does not mean something is poorly written. you actually should go out of your way to engage with media about people who are fundamentally different from you because it helps you learn about others."

[ven-of-oath]

I love trans headcannons as much as the next person but there are times where it circles a little to close to being homophobic

[lightningshrikes]

warning : this is gonna be a long post about my thoughts and feelings towards barbara gordon and the titles of batgirl and oracle. i want to make it very clear that i love barbara as a character and i am very protective of her as disabled representation in media. in fact, that's where a lot of my feeling towards her continuing to be put back into the role of batgirl come from.

so, my main issue is that i do not personally believe that barbara should be shoved back into the role of batgirl, i believe that she has fully outgrown that role and no longer needs it from a character standpoint. i think that putting her back into the spotlight as batgirl is a disservice to her character and the characters of cassandra cain and stephanie brown. there's a plethora of reasons i believe that, but the main ones are :

firstly, putting a mantle back onto barbara that she has already outgrown completely nulls any character growth that she's had outside of being batgirl. she has been shown time and time again to no longer need that title, and that she is doing more than fine making a name for herself without the shadow of batman being thrown over her hero name. it makes her yet another "bat adjacent" vigilante that is only discussed in her relation to bruce wayne, which is idiotic, as she has many relationships outside of bruce, and has helped out many heros who aren't even on a team with batman.

adding onto the first point, having barbara still be "the batgirl" in comics doesn't allow for the other batgirls who came after her to have the relationship with the mantle or even barbara herself that they do have, and had, for decades. often times they get shoved into the background, and honestly forgotten about. it erases the past that all of these characters have gone through, just so that barbara can be a hot able-bodied hero again.

that brings me to my last point. the sexism and ableism that is intertwined when writers decide to make barbara batgirl again needs to be discussed together. because while it is definitely incredibly ableist to make a very obviously and historically disabled hero able bodied, even with a "scientific" explanation, the reasoning as to why it happens reeks of misogyny. while batgirl itself is not a misogynistic title, and i believe that it still should be given and held by someone, giving it to the original holder so that she can be "attention grabbing" again, is.

i think to fully explain what i mean, i will have to dip my toes a bit into real life ableism/misogyny that i have seen and experienced myself. the thing is, a lot of fanboys of media only like women (real or fictional) when they are objectively sexy. so, they really only care about a female comic character if she is hot and fills some sort of attractiveness checklist for them. now, a disabled woman, especially a visibly physically disabled woman, is not hot to the majority of men. when you look on social media, or when you yourself are a disabled woman, it is incredibly obvious that you are treated differently because you being disabled instantly makes you less attractive.

so, how does this apply to barbara? well, as we know, the vast majority of comic fans you interact with outside of small bubbles on the internet are men. so, it makes sense that comics want to appeal to these men by making their women attractive, especially the ones that are/were popular. barbara is a generally well known female character, so i fully believe that when she was paralyzed a lot of male fans of hers were no longer interested in her character because she was disabled, and therefore not hot. maybe i could even go as far as to say certain writers were no longer interested in writing her because of her disability! that's the point im trying to make here : barbara is being put back into the batgirl mantle in order to appeal to male fans who knew her as batgirl, and that also means no disability.

barbara gordon is disabled, and there is no reason we should be happy or even okay with her disability being erased in any way. especially when it is coming from a place of sexism and misogyny.