While I absolutely respect the desire to see a powerful version of oneself in superhero characters (that is after all kind of the point), I find myself bouncing off of readings of Barbara Gordon that characterize her as a stone badass who never ever doubts herself or allows her disability to affect her.
Barbara's arc between Ostrander's Suicide Squad and Dixon's Birds of Prey is about her slowly learning to accept her disability. She starts this arc as sort of an ableist. In fact, even at peak chair era, she has shit to say about neurodivergent people and never really expresses any kind of real solidarity with them. She does much later, when written by other people, but that's N52 stuff and I don't fuck w/ that.
For Barbara, early in her time in the chair, her outlook is very "I am less of a person now, the life I wanted is over." imo, that's really what makes her stand out as a disabled character among the many other characters put through the wheelchair whackamole, like Charles Xavier and even Bruce Wayne. That's real dude.
I've worked with a lot of people early in their rehab after amputations and spinal injuries, Babs' mourning process is incredibly honest and well-captured for a couple able-bodied writers, imo. One of the best Oracle Moments is right after Batman's wheelchair'd in Knightfall, and Barbara just says like, "that's rough buddy," because what else can she say? She doesn't give him some pep talk about believing in himself, and the most advice she can offer at this point in her arc is, "talc your ass up or you're going to have brutal sweat rashes." She hasn't learned to be the character who can offer that pep talk, just a kind of honest empathy of, yeah this being disabled shit, sucks huh.
At this point in her arc, she's barely even willing to be seen by others for fear of being reduced to "woman in a wheelchair." She's even reluctant to let Dinah know. She has to work up the esteem to date again and even uses Ted Kord as a trial run before immediately classifying him Gay Best Friend like Tina Fey at a brunch bar.
What makes Barbara compelling isn't that she's not daunted by her wheelchair. It's that she learns to accept and work around her disability rather than just putting on some kind of comic book cyborg suit to continue being Batgirl. She still has a whole lot of baggage around independence and an inability to accept assistance. That imo is what makes her relatable and real, while many other disabled comic book characters feel saccharine or condescending, more like a PSA episode about believing in yourself than actually living with an acquired disability.
My personal reading of the character is that her "unafraid of her disability" moments like choosing a submarine, an incredibly inaccessible space, as her bail-out bunker is not a sign that she's a cool badass who doesn't afraid of stairs. It's more that she has to really learn how to be disabled and when she chooses the submarine it's a sign that she kind of hasn't yet.
When Dinah talks to her during the submarine raid, Barbara isn't like, "don't worry babe, I can shuffle along on the ceiling like the hallway Cenobite from Hellraiser," she's actually absolutely convinced she's fucked because getting outta there seems impossible to her. When she realizes she's going to have to swim with half her body paralyzed, she's like, oh fuck, I guess I'm drowning. She makes the attempt anyway and survives, because she's Barbara and that's her whole thing, but it's not that she doesn't let herself feel fear or doubt due to her disability, it's that she perseveres in spite of said fear and doubt.
That, imo, is a far cooler thing to do with your disabled character. Acknowledge the shame, fear and self-doubt that comes with a disabled body in an unaccommodating world, acknowledge the mistakes you're going to make as you learn how to be disabled, dust yourself off and don't let it defeat you. Make stupid choices like renting an apartment with stairs and zero ability to have a lift installed, thug it out for six months, realize how dumb that is, and then have the self-acceptance and honesty to move to a single-floor building where you're not fighting yourself every day.
idk man, I feel like we all go through some version of being a kid with cerebral palsy insisting on using crutches instead of the chair in inappropriate settings because we, being young and hyper-conscious of difference, see the chair as somehow "less;" I feel like the best of us learn to accept and overcome the shame, fear and doubt of the chair, and let it become a neutral part of who we are. I think that's a hyper-specific example but I've seen the same in hard of hearing kids who insist on lip reading over using aids, in autistic kids who insist on forcing themselves to mask, yadda yadda. It's just part of a lot of disabled peoples' lives and Barbara embodies that.
