[ SECRET POST #1107 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1107 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

No need to leave comments like "HERE AGAIN SINCE IT WAS FORGOTTEN THE LAST TIME I SUBMITTED IT," please. It was not forgotten. You submitted it three times to the same submissions post.

Secrets Left to Post: 18 pages, 448 secrets from Secret Submission Post #159.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 4 5 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeat ], [ 1 - take it to comments ], [ 1 2 - doing it wrong ], [ 1 - ships it ], [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 - posted twice ], [ 1 - text secret (PROTIP: YOUR SECRETS MUST GO ON AN IMAGE)], [ 1 - comment asking how to submit secrets (PROTIP: THERE IS AN FAQ)].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom.livejournal.com]

129. http://i49.tinypic.com/ac8sok.png

[dethtoll.livejournal.com]

fuck yes, finally someone gets it.

[justaminuet.livejournal.com]

I loved Barbara as Batgirl, but dammit she's just so much more badass as Oracle. It was like she went, "Okay, so I can't kick the shit outta crime the way I used to. So, gotta find a new way, then." And she did. And she does what she does better than anyone. That's pretty frickin' sweet. If people don't appreciate what Oracle does, then they really need to step off and re-read some comics.

[morrienymph.livejournal.com]

This, this, this.

[streussal.livejournal.com]

Barbara becoming Oracle was not planned when she was initially paralyzed though. Wiki says Kim Yale and John Ostrander formed her into the Oracle because they found The Killing Joke pretty distasteful.

So I think The Killing Joke itself still counts as fridging, but the character still found ways to kick butt.

[seiberwing.livejournal.com]

So she unfridged herself?

[switch-heart.livejournal.com]

Thank god someone else understands.
I adore Babs and she will always be the best Batgirl but as Oracle she is so much more than just a crimefighter.

I still seriously need to get some Oracle icons.

[dynus.livejournal.com]

She was though; she was targeted by the Joker because he was out to get her father, commissioner Gorden. That is what fridgging is; villains targeting a female character to get at a male character.

I do agree with the spirit of the secret though.

Barbara was strong enough to take the fridgging and turn herself into something better. Barbara is, quite frankly, the most important person in the the DC universe. She connected to multiple teams; The JLA, the bats. She runs the Birds (sidenote: YAY FOR THEM COMING BACK!), training the current Batgirl, and not to mention the many other friends she has in the superhero community. She's in the center of the DC universe, (On earth anyways).

This only happened because she's Oracle. She does so much more as Oracle than she did as Batgirl.

op

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think she was even targeted. She just happened to be unfortunate enough to be the one to open the door. If anyone else had been there, they would have gotten shot too. It wasn't "let's get his female relative", it was "let's ruin his life any way we can".

[daniela-lynx.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love Babs as Oracle, and she's even more kickass as Oracle as she was as Batgirl (and how I loved her as Batgirl!), but it's still fridging. The writer made a male character harm her to better showcase another male's character ~manpain~. Her coming back as Oracle wasn't planned at first.

Yes, she was put on a fridge, and it's a fact. But then she Got Better.

I'm glad other writers believed in her and continued writing Babs as a powerful female character, not despite the wheelchair, but along it.

op

[(Anonymous)]

By that logic though, Nora Frize was fridged (well literally I'd buy since she was FROZEN, but you know what I mean), and Mrs Wayne but not Mr Wayne (since apparently only women can be fridged?).

And would it make any difference if it was, say, Talia that shot her? Can a woman be "fridged" by another woman? Or to harm another woman? Because no one seems to consider it such even if the situations are the same.

[la-petite-singe.livejournal.com]

ITA. For all the wank about racism and sexism out there (some reasonable, some not), there's not a lot of complaints about ableism, and it's definitely something that bothers me.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I agree with the above posters that yeah, really, she was fridged (I believe the quote from the editor when the plotline was first bandied about was "Cripple the bitch!") but she recovered from the fridging.

Having said that, anyone who doesn't think someone in a wheelchair can be a BAMF needs to see Murderball.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I've learned what fridging is now, so I'm not sure I agree exactly with the secret, but I sure as heck agree that Oracle is amazing.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sure you didn't post this for a pedantic discussion of the concept of "fridging," but I agree with the above that she was still fridged (although I also agree other writers have used that in positive and awesome ways since).

Fridging isn't a term for a villain's motivation, it's a term for a writer's motivation. Fridging is when a writer is stumped for a way to get at a male character and concludes, "I know! I'll do something awful to his girlfriend/mother/daughter! No one really cares about her, and that'll give him something awesome to be angry about." It's using a female character as a tool to give a male character motivation rather than caring about the female character. This is illustrated nicely by Moore asking the DC editors if it was okay to do that to Barbara, and apocryphally they wrote back with "cripple the bitch." Classic fridging: who gives a shit about the chick when you can make the important characters (Jim and Bruce) suffer?

Origin-story killings are a little more ambiguous, since people like the Waynes or the Els weren't technically characters at their "time of death." They were created to die, unlike Barbara, who had a full personality and history. And of course a woman offing a woman can be a fridging--again, the villain doesn't matter at all, what matters is the writer using a female character as a means to an end. Technically a guy could get fridged as well, it's just so notably more likely to happen with female characters that the term generally means only them.

Sorry, I got thinking about the topic and got long-winded. And I certainly agree with the spirit of your secret, which is that people shouldn't remember Barbara as a victim, but as an awesome, kick-ass character. Definitely! But that was despite what Moore did to her--he never had any intention of her becoming Oracle, he didn't even see her at all except as a way to torment Jim.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

This!

The Killing Joke as originally written is totally Barbara getting fridged. The writer's giving Jim and Bruce motivation using Barbara as a tool to do that because she's Jim's daughter (and formerly Batgirl, unbeknownst to the Joker).

That another writer took the character who thank goodness wasn't outright killed and used all the great potential she had is great and proof that fridging can be undone and different writers can use characters in different ways.

Sometimes it seems like people think saying she was fridged is an insult to Barbara or Oracle, like you don't see she's awesome. It's more a criticism of Alan Moore for not seeing her. "Cripple the bitch" indeed!

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, pretty much this.

[xanykaos.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

I don't know, but the honest truth is, I am freaking SICK of the term fridging, because it gets pulled out every time a bad guy makes someone other than the hero suffer.

...

That's called conflict people.

It's like it's this automatic stamp of something that's being poorly written. Look, the plain honest truth is, if you're a terrible evil bad guy and you want your nemisis to suffer, you are probably going to try and attack people they're close to. It's not a case of sexism, it's just...it's just another path the story can take, and the reason it's so freaking prevelant is that a good portion of the time, it works.

Drama sells comics. Characters need to be motivated. And let's face it, revenge is one of the most classic, if not noble, motivations there is. It's not always a bad thing in a story.

Bruce Wayne's parents got "fridged" apparently. How insensitive! They exist only to move his story forward! Terrible writing, that! Why don't we go and give them equal development and storytime and all...

Look, I'm not saying it's not a problem. Kyle Rayner's girlfriend, the trope-namer for fridging, got a raw deal. Sue Dibny got a raw deal. There are plenty of times when it's handled in a very bad way. But every time someone other than the hero is targeted, we've gotta cry "FRIDGE" and look angry.

...it's tiresome.

I mean, why not just say all of the Jokers victims are stuffed in the fridge; the only reason he kills 'em is to get to Batman most of the time.

I don't know, but I get skeptical of fridging that doesn't actually take someone out of the game. The heroes lead a life that's dangerous for them and for the people around them. In real life, cops do have their families threatened. In a story that was not focused on her, something bad happened to Babs, which she then overcame (and became fifty times more hardcore in the process). And it became a part of her story and moved her story forward in time, when she was in a story that focused on her.


Also going to add that while I roll my eyes at the over-cry of "FRIDGE" I see a little red at the logic that fridging can only happen to women. Yes, we know that the comic industry is more than a wee-bit male-oriented and sometimes it can get uncomfortable if not down-right insulting. But it just seems silly to say that Martha Wayne was fridged, but Thomas Wayne was...um...just killed.

(And referring to rape as fridging has got to stop. It's rape: we don't need a new word to convey how incredibly creepy and wrong it is when writers slide it into the backstory or use is to create teh dramas in really weird spots. And don't get me started on how Batman's rape was just treated as a night of boozed-up sex. Ugh.)

...
time for the fireworks.

[vieillerie.livejournal.com]

But when Bruce got his back fucked up, everybody just knew he was going to recover. Because he's a guy, he's the main character, and he's the goddamn Batman.
Don't get me wrong, I also like Barbara way more as Oracle. Every cloud has a silver lining, they frigded her and someone managed to turn that into something awesome, but that doesn't change the fact. Honestly, this biased sexist criteria that allows a reader to know from the get-go if a character is going to survive/recover from a given situation just based on his popularity and his status is one of the genre's worse flaws. Heroes rarely appear vulnerable and sometimes it's hard to relate to their struggles or be truly thrilled about wether or not they're going to win in any given situation because of it.

And I don't think Jason is a good example. They killed him because they hated his guts. Most people still hate him still, Red Hood or no Red Hood.

[lady-wormtongue.livejournal.com]

I love Oracle, she's such an inspiring character. :)

[cookinguptales.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. I actually ended up writing a paper on this in my first semester in college. As a disabled woman, it made me really, really angry to see feminists speaking like she was 'ruined'. When my genetic disability kicked in, was I ruined? Why are mental capabilities considered to be lesser? (Good to know that even though I achieved my life's dream of getting into an amazing college due to my mental prowess...it's not worth anything as long as I can't walk!) Oracle is my inspiration to be fucking awesome even when I can't move around as awesomely as Batman. :| So suck on that, people who believe she was fridged.

She wasn't fridged. Her character was thrown a challenge and she overcame that shit. You never got to see just how incredibly strong she was until she became Oracle.

[isilrandir.livejournal.com]

Yes. This. I hate it when people talk about wanting her to walk again so she can be Batgirl again because she was the best Batgirl (which I will argue with, but that's not the point of this comment). Because she might have been good as Batgirl but she's AMAZING as Oracle. She really came into her own as a character after The Killing Joke, and I love her for being a total badass.

[voodoo-buddha.livejournal.com]

Ever heard of Death Ball?

[scottyquick.livejournal.com]

Read this (http://bluefall.livejournal.com/22129.html#cutid1).

[gabzillaz.livejournal.com]

HELL YES

Babs <3