There's a bunny in my brain!!

[capri0mni]

So, yestderay, when I started writing about what I want to see in a potential disabled!superhero, I really only had one or two vague notions... But I had spent so much time and energy on the justification for my notions, I forced myself to come up with a list of five specific things, to balance it out.

1. The character should be from an ordinary background -- so s/he can't be isolated from life's consequences by a fortress of silver spoons.



2. The character accepts of the disability as part of his/her whole person. Maybe, even growing up with the disability is what makes the character want to be a hero, in the first place -- a sense of connection with and empathy for the people society would rather forget.



3. Ideally, there should be occasional signs that ordinary disabled people actually exist in the world, along with the hero: curb cuts in the background illustrations, and maybe a handicapped parking sign, or someone in a wheelchair (or with a guide dog, or using sign language) in the background crowds.



4. The hero can still be a hero without erasing or negating the disability.



5. The disability should be incidental to the crime-fighting ability, as it is for Oracle, fighting in cyberspace, or Professor X, who fights crime with his mind.

Once the specifics were there, a disgruntled plotbunny moved in and started to make a nest out of them.

And then, today on the radio, this show came on, all about biological chimeras, and bio-engineering. The first things they talked about were dragons an mermaid!monkeys, and the like. Then, they interviewed a woman who had her biologically distinct, fraternal, twin living inside her (if the two embryos had merged just a couple of days later, she would have been born a siamese twin, instead of as a single person), then, they interviewed someone who said that you could even bump two different embryos from two different animals (like a goat and a sheep, or a chimp and a human) together in a petri dish, and you'd get a single creature with distinctly different body parts -- this would be a creature with four parents, not two...

And Mr. Plotbunny really started hopping around in my brain -- this is what he's rattled off to me, so far:

• Newly expectant parents receive the bad news that their child will be born with severely stunted, dysfunctional legs, if nothing is done...



• But the doctors have a miracle cure ready -- if they can implant some specially modified cells of a lizard embryo into her womb, the genes from those cells will merge with the feotus's spinal chord, and the nerves, nscles, and bones of the legs will grow normally.

(or so they assure the parents)


• But when the baby is born he (or she?) still has those dysfunctional, stunted, legs -- and the specially modified lizard cells have expressed latent genes, and merged with the baby's human body in a different way: s/he has a long tail, and sprouting from the child's back is second pair of shoulders, supporting a pair of ancient-looking, feathered wings (so the creatures that are ancestors of today's birds are really from a different branch than the lizards that regrow limbs -- this is Comic Book science!)



• Naturally, the doctors, horrified by this "monster" (and terrified that the results of their hubris will be made public), pressure the parents to place the child in a special institution for the hopelessly disabled (come up with some better euphenism?), where rigorous therapy and special training will make the best of a bad situation, and minimize the child's differences.



• In this "Special School" (which is really an orphanage for abandoned disabled kids) the therapists bind her/his wings, in hopes that they will atrophy and shrink, and have her/him spend hours in repetitive exercises to try and force her/his legs to grow... But s/he finds ways to get away and practice flying in secret.



• Character is, nonetheless, basically happy there -- has a handful of close friends among the other kids, and one or two adult allies who secretly support efforts at flight, both physical and imaginative/cognitive (maybe the kid is good with her/his hands, and a genius at design and the making of clockwork thingies -- a Vulcan/Hephestus trope. Maybe gets a job outside the Home for pin money, helping in a fixit shop for antique clocks (yes, this is blatant stealing from The Invention of Hugo Cabret), or something -- maybe a robot repair shop, and antique clockwork is a hobby.



• Then CASTROPHE STRIKES! The Childhood world is shattered at the hand of Evil, for good or ill (war, crime, in the crossfire of Mafia-like war), and the Character is forced out into the wider world, vowing to put things back in balance, etc. etc. Comic Book Trope follows, here.



• When not in Hero!Mode, the character hides the wings and tail under a loose fitting coat, as s/he was carefully taught to do, at the home, and gets around by wheelchair (maybe, if this is a futuristic society that likes to pretend its a utopia, and handicapped people don't exist, this wheelchair is homemade, using the character's leet skills), and sometimes, by a skateboard, propelled with her/his arms, and maybe, occassionally, even crutches and braces/prosthetics -- the character is not bolted down to any one mode of travel... But could, maybe, carry the skateboard when flying, somehow, and have it ready after landing.



• Robot / clockwork shop is the day job. Customers' reluctance to give business to a "defect" is overcome by the character's quality work. Customers are few, but loyal -- they need their robots to work -- and if shop is in a "downscale" area of the city, it could be a good place o gather information on what the Villains are up to. S/He could also build A.I.-clockwork hybrid robots, to help with the crime fighting.

And that's all I've got, so far.

Comments

I like it!

[barbarafett.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! You now have a plot for a future month-long writing challenge of your choice. :-)

(I have several, myself... it's a matter of choosing between them, which I really should do soon.)

Re: I like it!

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

...not sure the bunny will still be hopping in April or even November, but if it is, I may certainly play with it...