Wildcat Takes His Shirt Off and Punches People for 32 Pages would make me break my DC embargo.

Some folks on Twitter have pointed out that making Barbara into Batgirl again puts Oracle fans in the rather awkward position of hoping that she's horribly injured.

So I just argued that Babs wasn't a fridging anymore because Oracle turned out too cool. Is that a supportable stance, you think? I mean, they might have paralysed her to get angst for the big boys, but they took an established character in her own right, and five years later, she was even cooler. So it kinda worked against what the fail they might have intended.

Not really, no. That the character wound up in Suicide Squad and then basically being TEH AWESOMEST! AFTER The Killing Joke doesn't negate that she was 'fridged.

I'm not saying she wasn't fridged. I'm saying she isn't a fridging.

Every once in a while a sentence comes along that makes me wonder how long ago I would not have understood it.

I'm not saying she wasn't fridged. I'm saying she isn't a fridging.

I'm not sure I think there's an applicable difference, at least not how I use/understand the term. Just because tasty beer comes from the tap, doesn't mean the product's not in a kegerator.

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Wow. Can it be Friday? Please?

I mean, I get what you're saying, and perhaps from a Watsonian perspective, I agree, but from a Doylest one, not so much.

I'm saying she isn't a fridging.

I think that the prospective character's fridge-status depends on whether what happens to her is intended to affect/punish some male character and drive him to action, or is primarily about her and her narrative.

The problem with fridging is that it turns female characters into nothing more than devices used to affect the male characters--they are tools rather than individuals.

At least, that's how I've always understood it.

The problem with fridging is that it turns female characters into nothing more than devices used to affect the male characters--they are tools rather than individuals.

But Oracle *is* an individual. She's a marvellous individual. People are hoping she gets injured again. So how can she have been turned lastingly into a mere device? I'm saying it didn't stick.

When the Killing Joke came out, Barbara Gordon was a fairly minor character in the DC universe. Batgirl wasn't that active in the DCU at the time as I recall. In fact she was officially retired as Batgirl a couple months before Killing Joke came out. Crippling her was roughly the equivalent of knocking off Sue Dibny - a well loved and fondly remembered character.

Batgirl was a bit more iconic, though that was in part because of her appearance on the sixties TV show.

So I'd say Killing Joke totally fridged her. What happened after that was the interesting part, when Kim Yale and John Ostrander decided to explore the character and her situation of living with a disability.

You could say that they defridged (defrosted?) her character, really exploring the implications of post-injury life and what she could make of it.

Basically, they fridged her and then she knocked the refrigerator door off its hinges from the inside.