Somebody elses bunny

[beccaelizabeth]

You know when somebody else tells a plot bunny and you think you could do soooo much better with the pieces of it but it was their bunny first?
Someone who quite a lot more people have heard of than has heard of me was saying a bunny about Supergirl.
For reasons known only to my subconscious, I just got a quite detailed bunny taking the first bunny to bits and using the good ones.

Supergirl as girl from abusive home. Scared of being a bad guy.
Superbrain human sidekick with famous physicist family and genetic inherited disability.

So in my head, Supergirl is raised not knowing she's adopted, much less from Krypton, and then one day it's like in Buffy in Chosen where the guy takes a swing and the girl stands up. Because you know the next part of that is unfortunately going to be like Buffy in ... Ted? With the robot that was abusing her so she hits back and he gets dead and she gets arrested. So Supergirl doesn't actually kill her father, just send him through a couple of walls and get arrested by the special crimes unit.

This being the DCU, sorta, they do know from superpowers, so she grew up knowing about Superman, who has been an active superhero for all her teenage years. She doesn't think he's all that, though. Sure, he rescues space shuttles and stuff, but the problems outside her window stay the same. Problems inside too. And as for calling him family... where was he, when her dad went too far and her mom moved out and she was supposed to do all the jobs?

So Superman exists, but Supergirl has a different angle on the world, different concerns, different way people see her and different effect. So the world does too need a Supergirl even when there's a Superman.

But she's not so sure she wants that.

The super brainy guy, who isn't actually a meta just a STAR labs scientist, she meets when she goes in for tests. And she thinks he's gorgeous. Er, not that I want to write a story about a superheroine that turns into a love story with a strong girl. There's theme in a minute.

So, she thinks he's gorgeous, and she does all these tests, and then he gets up from the computer chair at the end of a long day and sits in a wheelchair and pushes himself along. And she's all reacting to that, saying all the wrong things, realising she's said all the wrong things, still thinks he's gorgeous so she's all ground swallow me now. Huh, except Supergirl could totally do that on accident, tunnel down... ANYway...

He's got a condition that's going to require a powered wheelchair and a speaking box and eventually a breathing machine, but for right now he's a young man with a diagnosis and some wheels for when he's tired. So he's in and out of the chair. But he knows exactly how worse it could get.

So, point being, is actually disabled. And really smart. And being disabled doesn't make him a character who doesn't get to be in the story or date the superhero or all that.

So anyway, you know the thing where Superman takes Lois flying, and it's really sweet and romantic and that?

Supergirl takes her smart new boyfriend flying. Sweet, romantic, and making the wheels really, really irrelevant. Because up there he's no more or less disabled than the next guy. And he's totally dependent on her, but in a way that's a joy for both of them. They're both flying, she's just the only one can land safe.

And also, he knows more than her about the atmosphere and how cold it gets and useful things like that. Flying is new to her but he's got all this theory knowledge to contribute.

So it's all nice and sweet and shiny. And then she meets his parents, and one of them is considerable further along and more power assisted. And it's all awkward. She feels like... like being fat, only not, kind of like there's too much of her or something. And she also realises when her dad gets up again he could be in much the same state, wheels and all. And she totally can't deal.

So she flies away again, but now she has the super hearing and she gets all the cry for helps from all over the world. Everyone wants something. Everyone wants her to look after them. And from where she's standing, they're all much alike, all the same capabilities, because none of them can look after themselves the way she can. Planet of little disabled humans, and here she is expected to be their carer.

What if she doesn't want to?

Just because Superman wants to spend his days that way, why should Supergirl?

And they do so much of it to themselves. Crime and war and domestic violence. If it was just natural disasters that would be easy, but she can fight crime every day and there's still always going to be more of it. It'll never be job done and applause all round and have a nice life to do what she wants. There will always be all these people crying. And she'll always hear them.

So the divide for her is she's seeing superheroics as women's work, as care work, as housework, and she's sick and up to here of it. And she might be bullet proof but she's fully had enough of people wanting to hurt her anyway. And why should she help? Really? Why?

So she has to find a why that doesn't block her in, a why that makes it her choice and not some kind of social obligation.

This could either be a temptation story, with a superpowered villain or one of those that set up their own country, the whole 'you could be queen of the world' thing.
Or it could be about not wanting the power, not wanting to be that big that you're a target or that you could feel obligated, the thing where if great power is great responsibility why would you want great power? And the villain for that would be Parasite, I think, drains off powers from others and keeps them, so they can give away power/responsibility... and watch someone else misuse it.
Or, of course, combine the two.. have a bit of a 'we could rule the world together' thing meet a 'you only want the power' thing and have the powers given away and stuff.

Being born superpowered doesn't oblige her to be Supergirl. She's got to find a way to use what she's got to live her own life. And make the symbols her own.



I don't even like supergirl comics!
... I do like the image of everyone being a bit disabled and supergirl being expected to mom them.
Of course then I'd have to fix it, and I think I'd have to write the first two thirds of the story before I'd really know how to do that. I think it would be about having a career and a life, not giving all your life to your public image, making yourself over. Something about balance. And about finding which part of the job gives you joy. Like, nobody says Supergirl has to turn up at every robbery. But if she particularly likes taking injured people to hospital she'd make a great air ambulance. That would be about not letting her body define her, just because she's strong doesn't mean she has to lift stuff for a living.

Oh, also I'd have to fix the disabled=dependent side. So humans would have to be really helpful in the final confrontation. Preferably weak wheelie humans. They would be underestimated because who would want to steal the power from someone already so underpowered? And then they would use smart physics brains and technology to make stuff possible. Probably short out the parasite machine and Supergirl have her powers back. Except there's a slight dent in the girl power if the guy has to turn off the parasite machine. Only really there's a lot of uphill involved in being a girl, the existing setup there to make it harder to do anything, so it could be a good image too as long as Supergirl does some fighting back of her own and makes her own choice.

Plus whenever it's a given or built in power then the big hero moment comes when they do something where their powers won't help or protect them. So even with her biological powers taken out Supergirl would choose to be Supergirl and go take her power back.

With a bit of help from her team.


That would work.



It would help more if I got bunnies I had the remotest interest in writing up.

Comments

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Yay, Supergirl!

[beccaelizabeth]

yeah, and if my reaction was ever yaay rather than *facepalm* then getting bunnies would make soooo much more sense.